SEVEN

‘So you let him shoot himself?’

It was an hour later and we were back in Lord Taggart’s office. Our efforts in tracking down the killer hadn’t done much to redeem us in the Commissioner’s eyes.

‘It was rather difficult to stop him, sir,’ I replied, ‘seeing as he had a loaded gun in his hand.’

More to the point, I was quite glad he’d fired at himself rather than at me.

‘You’re sure this was the man who murdered the crown prince?’

‘Yes, sir. His revolver is being tested as we speak. We should have confirmation as to whether it was the murder weapon within twenty-four hours.’

The Commissioner pondered this.

‘And there’s nothing to suggest a wider political dimension?’

‘We’ve no way of knowing if this was a one-off attack by some disgruntled fanatic or the start of something more serious, sir.’

Taggart removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘Have you any theories, gentlemen?’

I’d been expecting the question, but that didn’t make it any easier to answer. I had some ideas, though not much more than speculation and postulation and half-baked premises, and nothing that was remotely reasoned through. Still, Lord Taggart wanted answers and it was my job to give him some.

‘We’ve several theories, sir,’ I replied, ‘but nothing concrete.’

‘Let’s hear them anyway.’

‘First, and most likely at this stage, the man was a religious fanatic who bore a grudge against the crown prince. The problem is we don’t know why he’d do that.’

‘Who knows why religious fanatics do anything?’ replied Taggart. ‘That’s why they’re called fanatics. Besides, the fact that he shot himself rather suggests he wasn’t exactly playing with a full deck, Sam.’

Surrender-not coughed gently. Taggart turned to him.

‘You have something to add, Sergeant?’

‘If I may, sir, there may be some . . . problems with that theory.’

‘Such as?’

‘There are some loose ends, sir. When cornered, the assassin burned some documents in a wastepaper bin before trying to escape. It would suggest he was attempting to destroy something incriminating. Their destruction took precedence over his attempt to flee, which could imply a wider conspiracy.’

Taggart thought for a moment. ‘Did you manage to retrieve the documents?’

‘No, sir,’ replied Surrender-not. ‘By the time we gained access to the room, they were little more than ash.’

‘So, at this stage, your theory is purely conjecture?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There’s also the letters, sir,’ I added. ‘The ones the prince wanted to show us.’

‘Did you get hold of them?’ asked the Commissioner.

‘Unfortunately not, sir,’ I replied. ‘We questioned the Dewan and the prince’s ADC. The Dewan claimed to know nothing about them. The ADC stated that he’d been shown them in Sambalpore but that they were in a language he couldn’t read. We requested permission to search the prince’s rooms but the Dewan refused. He was quite implacable on the subject. He said the hotel suite was sovereign Sambalpori territory.’

‘So you’ve no letters either,’ he grumbled. ‘The Viceroy is deeply concerned about this whole episode. Nothing is to be allowed to derail the current talks. Given the sensitivity, you’ll need to come up with something more than a bin full of ashes if I’m going to justify keeping the case open.’

‘There is one other thing, sir,’ I said. ‘We found a scrap of newspaper in the assassin’s hotel room. It had traces of gun oil on one side. We believe it was used to wrap the revolver.’

‘And?’

‘I think it might have been a package, sir. Someone delivered the gun to the assassin for this particular killing. It’s imperative we keep digging.’

The Commissioner sighed. ‘It’s not enough, Sam. The Viceroy wants the matter concluded. Unless you can come up with something concrete, loose ends or not, I’m going to have to close the case.’

Surrender-not and I trudged silently back to my office.

Loose ends.

The Commissioner employed them as throwaway words as though the letters and other indications of a deeper conspiracy were to be tossed to the breeze and forgotten about.

But I couldn’t just forget about them; they would lodge in my brain like stones in a shoe. I fretted over them with the compulsion of an alcoholic going after his next drink. Because to me they represented truth untold and, by extension, justice denied.

I was keen on justice. Always had been, but more so these days after the war. One thing it had taught me was that there was precious little justice to be found in this world, and anything I could do to further its ends was probably a good thing.

‘Right,’ I said, taking my seat. ‘The man wants something tangible. So let’s give it to him.’

From my desk drawer, I pulled out a folder and extracted the scrap of newspaper and the pamphlet Surrender-not suspected was a religious text.

‘We need to get these translated,’ I said.

Surrender-not was peering at the scrap of paper – the side with the picture and the English characters ‘NGER 99K’.

‘May I see that, sir?’

I handed him the scrap and he examined it.

‘I know what this is!’ he exclaimed, beaming like a Frenchman in a wine cellar. ‘I was sure I had seen it before.’

‘Well?’

‘It’s an advertisement for a sewing machine, sir. A SINGER 99K, to be precise.’ Then his face fell. ‘I’m not sure that takes us any further forward, though.’

I thought for a moment. ‘Maybe it does—’

Before I could continue, there was a knock at the door. Surrender-not rose to open it. In front of him stood our peon, Ram Lal. He was an old bird of about sixty, with grey hair, stubble, and the kind of pronounced stoop that comes from a life spent sitting on a stool, waiting for messages to deliver. Despite his years of service, Ram Lal had never quite managed to master English, and my conversations with him generally descended into a quagmire of pidgin Bengali, sign language and a fair degree of shouting and pointing.

‘Inspector Captain sahib,’ he said, saluting. ‘One chitee is coming.’ He handed me a small white envelope. There was no stamp or postmark. I ripped it open. Inside were two sheets of paper with a few lines scrawled in blue ink. The script was foreign, unintelligible to me, but I knew where I’d seen it before: the scrap of paper with the Singer advertisement.

I passed them to Surrender-not. ‘You know what these are?’

A smile broke out on his face. ‘The warning notes sent to Prince Adhir? Maybe the gods are smiling on us.’

‘Who gave you this?’ I asked the peon.

‘Kee?’

‘I don’t have time for this,’ I said. ‘Surrender-not, ask him in Bengali.’

‘Ke tomaké eita dilo?’

‘Desk sar-gent.’

‘Get down there and speak to the desk sergeant,’ I said to Surrender-not. ‘Find out who delivered this.’

The sergeant nodded and headed for the door with the peon at his heels.

I picked up the scrap of paper with the sewing machine advertisement again, then lifted the telephone receiver. It took a few calls to obtain the number I was looking for, but I had a hunch, and with a bit of luck, this scrap of paper, together with what I assumed were the letters the crown prince had received before his death, might just be enough to convince the Commissioner to keep open the case.

Surrender-not returned ten minutes later with a native constable in tow. The man had a nest of wiry black hair and a toothbrush moustache.

‘That’s not the desk sergeant,’ I said.

‘No, sir. The desk sergeant was of little help. The letter was delivered by a street urchin, probably paid a few annas for his trouble. This is Constable Biswal,’ he continued, originally from Bhubaneswar. I thought he might be able to help decipher our letters, sir.’

‘Very well,’ I said, passing the envelope to the constable. The man extracted the two sheets, read them quickly, then nodded.

‘Oriya,’ he said.

‘The language of Orissa,’ Surrender-not added. ‘It’s what most people in Sambalpore would speak.’

‘Most people?’ I asked.

‘The common folk,’ he said. ‘As Colonel Arora confirmed, they don’t speak it at the royal court.’

‘Can you translate them?’ I asked the constable.

‘Yes, sir.’ He smiled. ‘They both bear the same message: Your life is in danger, leave Sambalpore before the twenty-seventh day of Ashadal.’

‘When is that?’ I asked.

‘Yesterday,’ replied Surrender-not.

I was alone in the office when the telephone rang. It was the call I’d been waiting for – a lady by the name of Miss Cavendish from Singer Sewing Machines’ Calcutta office. I thanked her for returning my call, then asked what I needed to know.

‘Can you tell me in which Orissan-language newspapers you most recently placed advertisements?’

‘That’s a most obscure question, Captain Wyndham,’ she said in prim and matronly tones. You could almost smell the talcum powder down the telephone line. ‘I would need to telephone our representative office in Cuttack. May I call you back?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I look forward to it.’

Next I summoned Ram Lal from his stool in the corridor.

‘Find Banerjee,’ I said. ‘Tell him to come to my office.’

He smiled, displaying a few remaining teeth, then nodded his head in that curiously Indian fashion. ‘Many Banerjees is downstairs, sahib. Which one you want?’

‘Surrender-not Banerjee. The sergeant.’

‘Ah, Surendranath babu.’ He grinned. ‘Thik āchē.’

Surrender-not arrived just as Miss Cavendish called back.

‘Captain Wyndham? I have that information for you. It appears we only place advertisements in two Orissan-language newspapers. I’m afraid, however, that the pronunciation of their names is quite beyond me. If it helps, I can spell them for you.’

‘Please do,’ I said, grabbing a pen and notepad as she slowly spelled out the names. The first was titled the Dainik Asha. It was the second, though, that brought a smile to my face. The Sambalpore Hiteishini.

‘When were the advertisements last placed?’ I asked.

‘They’re weekly papers,’ she replied. ‘The most recent issues would have gone out last Monday.’

I thanked her and replaced the receiver, then passed the notepad over to Surrender-not.

He read it and grinned. ‘So there’s a chance the assassin was dispatched from Sambalpore.’

‘It looks that way,’ I said, ‘but we need to be sure. At the moment, all we really have is conjecture. A piece of newsprint, which we think was used to wrap what we believe was the murder weapon, which likely came from a newspaper printed in Orissa, possibly in Sambalpore.’

‘But taken in conjunction with the warning letters to the Yuvraj, surely it points to a connection to Sambalpore?’

‘I want copies of last Monday’s editions of both papers,’ I said. ‘Find that advertisement and, more importantly, match the writing on the other side. Then find out the radius of the paper’s circulation. Start with the Samhalpore whatever-it-is.’

‘Yes, sir.’ He nodded.

‘In the meantime,’ I said, picking up the letters, ‘I’m going to speak to Lord Taggart again. Let’s give him what we’ve got.’