Up in Flames (8 page)

             
Dan Khan shrugged his elegantly-clad shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. You heard my little sister in there. She said Chandra was lonely. She wasn’t suited to living alone. She had just lost her husband and no matter what Kamala said, there was affection between Chandra and Magan. She was depressed about the future. And then, of course, with Leela crying so much she didn’t get much rest. All in all a recipe for desperation.’

             
Casey wondered why, if this was the case, her mother or grandmother hadn’t babysat occasionally and given her a break. Why she had been left in such isolation with just a couple of visits from her parents. Apart from being at a difficult time of life, Mrs Khan Senior appeared healthy and fit enough to be able to look after one small child as did Mrs Rathi Khan and Devdan’s wife. He waited. He sensed there was more to come. He was right.

             
Dan Khan, like his sister, had large, lustrous, thickly-lashed  eyes. They gained a sheen of moisture as he told them, ‘My sister was a widow, Inspector. A widow with a baby daughter. I don’t expect you to understand what that means in our society, but we’re Hindus. It is not usual for Hindu widows to remarry. Maybe it’s better she’s dead. No-one else would want her now. My parents and grandparents like to believe she’s in Paradise. Perhaps they’re right. God knows, as a widow with a small daughter, Chandra was unlikely to find much Paradise down here. Think of the dowry my father would have to find, even if he could find a man willing to take them both on. He was trying to persuade my sister into an arranged marriage in India. With a much older man. It would have been much the best solution.’

             
For Rathi Khan certainly, if not for Chandra, was Casey’s immediate thought.

             
Dan Khan’s soulful gaze rested on his sweet-faced little daughter for a moment, as if seeing for the first time what might be her future. His cheek clenched and unclenched as if he didn’t much like what he saw. ‘My mother was very keen, too. It would have been much cheaper, you see, for her to marry someone in India. Much cheaper than here in England where the dowry is so high. They were worried that if my father didn’t arrange something that she might dishonour the family in some way with an unsuitable man.’

             
Had she? Casey wondered. Was that partly what her mother-in-law’s accusations had been about? Had Dan Khan found out about this anonymous unsuitable man? Had the rest of her family? Her in-laws? He questioned Dan Khan some more.

             
Bitterly, he denied it.

             
Casey wasn’t sure he believed him. Dan Khan seemed strangely resentful of his sister, even though it was clear he had loved her. Had he been jealous of Chandra? Jealous of her sudden freedom and the opportunity it presented to find herself a lover more to her taste? In spite of her agreeing to an arranged marriage, from her photo and from what he had learned about her Casey was sure that Chandra Bansi had not been the usual meek and biddable Asian stereotype, so it struck him as possible that she had taken a lover.

             
And if such a lover existed, he could be the real reason Rathi Khan had tried to keep the sisters apart. If Chandra had damaged her reputation by some unwise liaison, he wouldn’t want his younger daughter’s chances sullied by the connection. And as to what her family might do to Chandra...

             
‘And was your sister willing for your father to try to find another husband for her?’

             
‘No,’ Devdan admitted. ‘But it is possible she would have come round in time. She was aware that otherwise, she might face the rest of her life alone.’ Tautly, he added, ‘Strange she didn’t appreciate that there are worse fates than living alone. Of course, it’s different for a woman, but if I—’ he broke off. But Casey could guess at the rest - if I had gained my freedom from an unwanted partner, I’d count my blessings.

             
Casey could see why Chandra might have been depressed. Poor girl, what a situation to have to face just after losing her husband; even a husband she perhaps hadn’t loved. Devdan Khan seemed angry that his sister had gained a freedom he had envied and hadn’t appreciated it. But if what her brother said was right and there had been no lover, would her admittedly bleak Hobson’s Choice of futures have depressed her enough for her to kill herself and take her baby with her? And in such a way.

             
Then, of course, there was the alternative, that having dishonoured her family, they had helped her and her shame on a speedy journey to the next world.

             
He studied Devdan Khan thoughtfully for a moment, then said, ‘These accusations of Chandra’s in-laws - what did they consist of exactly?’

             
‘I told you.’

             
‘Tell me again.’

             
Briefly, Dan Khan’s eyes showed a hunted look. His expression wary, he said, ‘Nothing. Really. That she was undutiful, I suppose. Not a traditional Indian wife. Chandra had opinions and expressed them, that is all.’

             
‘They didn’t accuse her of taking up with an unsuitable man as your parents feared?’ Casey hadn’t expected an outright admission. Even so, in the circumstances, Dan Khan revealed more than was wise.

             
‘No. That is,’ he broke off. ‘Chandra was not as demure as her mother-in-law expected. I suppose she could be quite flirtatious, but that was all. If I or my father had thought she was more than that we would naturally remonstrate with her.’

             
Dan Khan wasn’t quite as modern and English in his attitudes as his adopted name and sharp suit indicated. Casey knew that most Asian men, if they caught one of their womenfolk compromising their ‘honour’ would do rather more than remonstrate.

             
Was Dan Khan’s question as to whether his sister might have killed herself sincere or merely designed to throw them off-track? In any case, he had few consoling words to offer him. And after Dan Khan had turned disconsolately away and walked back to the house with his child, Casey climbed in the car and directed Catt to return to the flat in Ainsley Terrace.

             
Casey didn’t mention the expression he had caught on Rani Khan’s face. As, no doubt, Superintendent Brown-Smith would in due course point out, Thomas Catt had a tendency to be woefully politically-incorrect in his suspicions. But even if he hadn’t imagined it Casey was aware that it probably indicated nothing more than the spiteful satisfaction of the plain woman when the more beautiful, loved, one is no longer there, no longer taking the love that was rightfully hers.

             
After Catt had turned the car and headed back to the scene, he remarked, ‘A parent’s loss of a child is said to be the most painful loss of all. Personally, I’ve always thought the opposite was true— that a child’s loss of his parents is far worse. Particularly if they were loving sort of parents.’

             
Surprised, Casey glanced at Catt. He said nothing. It was rare for Catt to mention something so close to the bone. Catt had told him he didn’t remember his parents; how could he, when they had abandoned him as a small child? Was he implying that Chandra had somehow lost her parents? Lost their love because of some action of her own? Casey asked him.

             
Catt nodded. ‘Her father said she was wilful and too westernised. He insisted the younger girl stayed away from her. Maybe, if her in-laws’ accusations were more than just their grief talking...?’

             
Casey wondered if Catt had been reading psychology books, but immediately rejected the idea. Catt was not a fan of such things, not since being labelled by a psychologist in his childhood. ThomCatt didn’t do labels or overly-simplistic conclusions about complex human emotions. He would be the last person to label a girl he had never met.

             
Thoughtfully, Casey half-turned in his seat to question Shazia Singh. ‘Did you catch any of the family’s Hindi conversation?’

             
She nodded. ‘The son, Devdan, said much the same as he said in English. The old lady was upset. She wanted to know how Chandra and the baby had died. Her son wouldn’t tell her, of course. Maybe he couldn’t see that it might have comforted her to know that Chandra had died in such a traditional way, burning in a fire, so soon after her husband’s death.’

             
Casey couldn’t imagine how anyone might find comfort in such a death, but he assumed Shazia Singh knew what she was talking about. And now he changed the subject. ‘We’ve heard what Hindu widows can expect. What about Hindu widowers?’ he asked her. ‘Are they allowed to remarry?’

             
Pretty, bold-eyed Shazia gave him a smile that had a touch of Catt’s cynicism. ‘It’s a man’s world, Inspector, which is something Chandra’s brother seems to have  forgotten. Naturally they can remarry. But for a Hindu woman, her husband is her career. Her obligation is to serve her husband and his family and provide him with children, especially sons.’

             
‘Like something out of The Stepford Wives,’ commented Catt.

             
‘But with much more emotion felt, obviously,’ was Shazia’s tart rejoinder. ‘The sole joy of the Hindu wife is meant to be to please her husband and to perform whatever services he demands. Even after his death, she is attached to him, bonded to him. A widow is expected to wear white, the colour of death, purity and grief and mourn her husband for the rest of her days. She must give up all forms of personal adornment, such as the wearing of jewellery or make-up. She is forbidden from attending social events, even the weddings of her own children.’

             
‘But surely, all those taboos wouldn’t apply here and now?’ Casey questioned. ‘We’re in the second millennium, after all.’

             
Shazia shrugged. ‘Religious teaching takes little notice of the time or the place, Inspector. Doesn’t the Catholic Church still hold medieval views on homosexuality? On sin? On carnality? Sex, not for pleasure, but for the procreation of children?’

             
‘Thank God I’m with the C of E,’ Catt put in irreverently. ‘My lot don’t even seem to believe in God, never mind sin.’

             
‘Anyway, go on,’ Casey encouraged Shazia. ‘What other experiences await a Hindu widow?’

             
‘In India they are often hounded from their home villages and lose all their possessions. Much of their mistreatment comes down to money and inheritance.’

             
‘Don’t most things, in the end?’ Catt muttered as a spasm of pain crossed his face.

             
As well as being irresponsible, Catt’s parents had been feckless and poor. Catt had confided one evening after downing too many lagers that they had abandoned him with a badly-spelt note pinned to his clothing, saying, “He costs too much. We can’t afford to keep him.”

             
But maybe ThomCatt had a point. Casey, with all the other aspects, had yet to look at every possible angle. Had Chandra inherited anything? Had her husband anything for her to inherit? It was essential to discover what the situation was, yet to ask her family or in-laws who were the obvious ones to supply the answer was unlikely to earn him any awards for diplomacy. Besides, how could he know what they told  him was the truth?

             
It was something else to be checked out. If her late husband hadn’t made a will Chandra would still have inherited a lot under the Intestacy Laws. The late Magan Bansi’s father was a businessman; had his son owned part of that business? Perhaps as a marriage gift? He made a mental note to check it out before he asked Shazia Singh to continue.

             
‘Widows are regarded as inauspicious. In fact, to quote an early Hindu text, the Skand A Purana, “The widow is more inauspicious than all other inauspicious things.” It goes on, “At the sight of a widow, no success can be had in any undertaking, excepting one’s mother, all widows are void of auspiciousness. A wise man should avoid even her blessings like the poison of a snake.” ‘

             
She broke into the shocked silence that greeted this, to add, ‘To escape the life of outcasts in their villages many Hindu widows congregate in a place call Vrindavan, a holy city, Krishna’s birthplace, in central India or Varanasi, the ‘City of Lights’, as Mr Dan Khan mentioned. There, if they are lucky, they might earn a few rupees for hours of chanting a day in one of the many temples.

             
‘The Hindu ban on the remarriage of widows was removed by a British law in the late 1800s, but the taboo on remarriage is still strong. For a widow to remarry brings dishonour on her family. It is believed, and not just by the poor and uneducated, that a woman’s husband dies because she has bad karma. And if she has bad karma, what is the point of marrying again? She is likely only to bring the same ill-luck to a second husband. It is her fault her first husband died, you see.’

             
‘Even if a man’s own stupidity caused his death?’ Casey asked.

             
Shazia nodded. ‘She loses all her status and begins a new life — one where she waits for death, fated to mourn the death of her husband till the end of her days. Widows are traditionally regarded as witches and despised by everyone. People still believe that widows are cursed or diseased and that even by simply speaking to them one will be contaminated. You can see why even an older man in India would require a substantial dowry to take on such a wife, even a beautiful one, like Chandra Bansi.’