Next morning at breakfast, I mulled over Adi’s problem. I had to treat it as an ordinary investigation, explore it as I usually did and find facts upon which to build my case. It didn’t feel at all “usual” because I fretted over each bit of testimony, doubted and questioned everything, so that nothing seemed steady or reliable. I was too close to it. By now the famous Holmes would have sifted out which evidence was of consequence, but I was still gathering the pieces.
Tamping down my frustration, I told Diana, “One usually begins an investigation by speaking with the victim’s family. But if I present myself as Adi’s representative, I doubt I’d get past the gate. I need a pretext.”
Dressed today in a pale blue sari, she heard me out, her dark eyes amused. “You want to enter Satya Rastogi’s home incognito?”
Back in India, it felt strange not to wear my usual army attire, khaki shirt and shorts. I glanced down at my linen trousers and white shirt, de rigueur in the tropics. “At Lloyd’s they took me for an Englishman. I wonder … could I use that to my advantage?”
She set down the teapot. “Jim, I believe Satya’s people are hereditary goldsmiths.”
Diana was reminding me this was a traditional Hindu family. In the army I’d met traditional Bengali tradesmen and Sikh farmers who signed up for better prospects but I could recall no sepoy from a goldsmith clan. In such closed communities, one needed a personal or familial connection to enter.
She said, “Can’t imagine they’d speak freely to an Englishman. Can you pretend some official capacity?”
I scratched my forehead. “No one tells the police more than they absolutely must.” My experience at the constabulary had taught me that. “I could go as a newspaperman, but that won’t serve. Satya’s parents would hardly speak with the press.”
“You want them to trust you, volunteer information?”
I accepted a second cup of tea. “I need to question them, examine where he lived, discover what his parents are like, his friends, his siblings—”
“But who are they, the Rastogis? Have you asked Adi about them?”
I shook my head. “Leave him out of this, sweet.” I struggled to articulate what had kept me up most of the night, and said only, “He’s … being obstinate.”
At that, her glance caught fire. I rushed to preempt the conflagration. “No—don’t lay into him. Let me poke around first. There’s something … peculiar about all this. Two witnesses who cling together like burrs on a saddlebag, and a gateman I’ve yet to meet.”
Diana blinked at me, so I narrated Faisal’s comments that apparently matched the factory watchman’s statement.
She grew thoughtful. “So, what will you do now?”
I finished the last bite of my omelet and picked up my solar hat. “I’ll drop in on McIntyre again. Need to know what he’s got against Adi.”
I walked in on McIntyre and Stephen Smith in the middle of an argument, or as close to one as I could make out.
Smith sputtered, “I do! But I can’t manage their accents, blast it! Send someone else.”
“You’ve been in India twelve years,” McIntyre began, his tone cold. “Sending a local chap would just—” He caught sight of me and stopped, eyes narrowed.
“Morning,” I said from the door. “I’m interrupting. I’ll come back.”
As I turned to leave, he called, “Agnihotri! Here, I’ve got a use for you.”
I shook hands with Smith, whose usually ruddy face seemed pinched. “So you’re my replacement, eh?”
I had intended it as a jest, but both men looked at me with close attention. “Is there a problem?” I said, lightly.
“What’d you want?” asked McIntyre, waving me to a chair. “Your old job back?”
My eyebrows shot up. “Hadn’t thought of that.” Judging it best to keep my questions for a more private moment, I invented quickly. “Is Dr. Jameson still around?”
“He is.” Reminded of my close connection to his friend, he brushed his mustache and said, “Look here, go with Smith, will you? He needs an interpreter.”
I considered that. It wouldn’t hurt to have Mac owe me a favor. “On one condition. Could I see the Rastogi file when I get back?”
He barked a laugh. “Or what? You’ll return with his solicitor?” Getting to his feet he said, “Oh, all right. But I wager you’ll be interested in Smith’s investigation.”
As we left, I smiled at my old comrade. “You joined the force! Congratulations.”
He grimaced. “Don’t know how you stood it. The bloody heat, for one. He expects me to go round in this frightful blaze! But you don’t mind, you’re half—” He cut short, with an apologetic glance.
Ignoring the tired assumption that natives were so hardened that we did not feel the heat, I greeted an old acquaintance. “Sub-inspector Sabrimal, good morning!”
“Welcome back, sir!” He saluted, grinning, his round head dancing on his neck. He’d grown more rotund in the intervening years. The friendly fellow’s stripes told me he was still awaiting his promotion to inspector.
As we stepped down the outer stairs, I asked, “So, where are we going?”
“The Rastogi residence,” Smith muttered, hailing a nearby Victoria driver. “Third time. They can’t speak English, and my Hindustani only goes so far.”
This was a piece of luck! He gave directions to Satya’s home, then I asked, “What have you learned so far?”
“Not much.” He mopped his crumpled brow, already pink from gusts of October heat. “They’re a large family, cousins and uncles all over the place. When we broke the news, there were a score or more! That’s without counting the women. Couldn’t tell who was his father or brother.”
“He has a brother?”
“No idea. Place was a circus!”
The Rastogis lived on crowded Sonapur Lane near Lohar Chawl, where they occupied an entire building. Through a padlocked gate we spoke to a man chewing tobacco. He summoned another, a thin bloke with shrewd eyes wearing a banded topi.
“You are the khansama?” I asked. The cook is often a large family’s steward.
“The mistri,” he corrected me, folding his hands. Clasping his long fingers together, the craftsman heard my polite request.
He motioned to the tobacco-chewing darwan to unlock the gate, said, “Wait here,” and left us in the courtyard.
Smith stalked over to a large stone by a tree and perched there gingerly. I glanced around at the neatly tended shrubbery and white-rimmed well, catching sight of figures peering from a higher floor. The barred windows brought an odd sensation to the pit of my stomach, like I was looking up at a prison.
When Smith pulled out his official book, I said, “Let me speak with them. We can compare notes afterward.”
He chewed his pencil and agreed. A few minutes later the thin mistri returned and bid us follow. He led us around the side, through a garden thickly treed with peepul and jacaranda. Like most homes, the kitchen was in a separate structure to protect the main house from kitchen fires.
A verandah abutted the kitchen shed from which wafted the aroma of spice and garlic. Here a large woman in an orange and yellow sari sat sideways on a swing suspended from the ceiling. A metal plate was propped on one bent knee, while she deftly wielded a small knife, shelling a mound of small vegetables with unconscious efficiency.
“Pranam,” I greeted her, folding my hands. Beside me, Smith blinked as though unsure whether to follow my lead, then took off his hat instead and fanned himself.
I explained that we were seeking Satya’s family, and asked where they were.
She made a wide motion with the knife. “Here. All around. We are all family.”
“His parents?”
She pointed at herself with the blade.
“Your name?”
She gave an amused sniff. “My parents named me Meera.”
“Thank you Meera-ji,” I said, adding the appellation. “And his father?”
The blade curved around toward the top floors. “Working.”
“He is a craftsman?” I asked, using the vernacular word, karigar.
“They all are.”
“And Satya?”
Her look dimmed. “What do you want to ask?”
Feeling my way, I asked, “Did Satya work here, earlier? Was he trained?”
“All are trained.”
Speaking of Satya had made her coldly angry, so I sought another direction.
“Do you train others too? Outside your family?”
She flicked her head, saying, “We are Daivadnya Brahmins. Only family members can become goldsmiths. You see that girl?” She pointed at a child working in the garden. “She is from another caste, a low caste. Do you think just anyone can handle gold?” She scoffed and returned to shelling her peas.
I asked, “Your husband. What’s his name?”
She showed teeth reddened with betel leaf. “Tansen. You met him just now.”
“The mistri?”
“All are karigars, workmen. We make kundan, Kolhapuri saaj, beautiful styles of jewelry. It takes years to learn!” Her hands worked automatically, plucking, cutting, shelling the green orbs.
“Why didn’t Satya work with his father?”
At this, she stared at me. “Ask him! Ask my son who is dead! How much we told him, begged him, shouted! But he wanted to work in a factory!” She spat the word, pronouncing it phac-ta-ry. I had touched a nerve.
The woman occupying the swing was unlike any mother I’d seen. Here was no kindly matron, but a matriarch. As a teen, I’d been invited by army comrades to visit their village homes. Curious about civilians, I’d accepted, but found myself confounded by a maze of unspoken rules. By custom, outsiders did not speak with the women whose faces were hidden under the edge of their saris. Satya’s mother showed no such modesty. Did she run the clan? Or was she deputized to turn us gora officers away?
I asked, “What did Satya do, at the factory?”
She turned a disgusted look on me. “He made spoons, knives of silver! Ugly, base things! After teaching him to spin gold into royal ornaments, the craft of the gods!”
She saw his choice as a betrayal. I asked, “Was he unhappy here?”
“Unhappy?” She reared as though such a thing was unheard of. “He had food, a place to sleep, clean clothes, a respectable craft. What more did he want?”
Smith cleared his throat and mumbled to me, “Did he have enemies?”
When I translated his question, the woman grimaced in surprise. “What enemies? We are all kin! Whoever killed him, they are from outside.”
No need to remind her of the countless princes, both English and Indian, who’d murdered brothers and fathers. I asked a few more questions, but her curt tone suggested the interview was at an end. No, her husband could not speak with us. No, Satya had no siblings. We departed, returning to the bustling gully with a sense of relief, even of reprieve.
As a boy I had fondly imagined coming home to find a hot meal awaiting me, to have a loved one place a cool hand upon my brow and fuss over me, checking for coughs or fever. No fear of that here.
One night onboard, Adi had mentioned that Satya had been a classmate. “At school,” he’d said, “what mad boys we were.” Although intensely traditional, Meera and Tansen Rastogi had educated their only son in the ways of the West, and possibly lost him to that life. What recriminations, what regrets did they feel? Yet in that brief, strained visit I had not sensed any familial affection—rather, it felt like a foray into an alien fortification.
I was writing my impressions in the morning room when Diana and her mother returned, laden with brown paper–wrapped packages and baskets.
“I cannot decide,” said Diana, tossing her hat and parcels on the table, “whether British rule is a blessing or a curse!”
Mrs. Framji slipped off her shoes at the door near the morning room, saying, “Imagine! Pears at eight annas a dozen. And custard apples.”
Smiling, she tucked her feet into a pair of slippers and went to the kitchen. Since shoes were never worn indoors, I usually padded around in my stockings. The Nepalese bearer Ganju bowed a salaam as he followed her, bearing more produce.
Diana dropped into a seat and fanned herself with my newspaper.
I set down my pen. “British rule?”
“It’s odd. Some are lovely people, like Emily Jane and your friend Superintendent McIntyre, but then, there are all these stupid rules…”
I chuckled at this. “Your friend Miss Channing might qualify as lovely people, but I doubt that my old boss has ever been called that.” Mac was as stiff as an Englishman could be, but his integrity was beyond question.
“Oh, you know,” she said, tugging the bellpull and laying her head back against the chair. “Take Jameson then, what a darling man he is.”
I hid a smile at the thought of what Dr. Jameson would think of such a fond characterization, then recalled his hand in our own union. Two years ago, when Diana had gone to him to inquire about my injuries, the old codger had guessed the nature of her affection. So, he’d sent me to the Framjis with a gift—a ruse, I now knew. Without his canny intervention I would have had little opportunity to declare myself to Diana.
Darling man, then—I allowed the epithet to pass unchallenged—and asked, “What stupid rules?” To her puzzled look, I added, “Something’s upset you. You said, a blessing or a curse?”
“Oh!” she huffed. “Emily Jane cannot visit me without a chaperone. How was it all right before I was married? We went everywhere together. But now she writes that her mother ‘thinks it’s unwise’!”
Her dark eyes held an astonished, injured look that turned irate. “Unwise! And I cannot borrow books from the Asiatic—I must be proposed to the board and seconded by two members who’ve been there two years already! The clerk sneered at my sari and acted as though I wasn’t standing right there. I felt quite … awkward … humiliated.” Her mouth mutinous, she ended, “In America they have the decency to be courteous to a lady.”
I chuckled at her tousled hair and outraged pout. “You always say you wish women were treated as men are. So, you cannot fault the boor—he cut you just as he would a man!”
The scrawny lad Bhim came in with a carafe of some pale liquid I took to be coconut water. Diana downed the glass with unladylike speed and handed it back to be refilled. When she’d finished this too, she sent the awed boy away with a smile that had him bouncing on his feet.
Her face grew serious. “It’s not that, Jim,” she said. “I like Europeans, individually. They’re usually pleasant to speak with and have interesting things to say. But collectively, the rules they insist upon are quite ridiculous and unfair! They say Indians are quite capable but won’t give us positions of responsibility. Take Adi, for example.”
I stiffened. “What about him?”
She flung out a hand. “His business. If his surgical tools would sell, they’d see how good they were and wouldn’t need to buy expensive stuff from abroad. But for months, Adi couldn’t get the permit to build his factory! And when he finally persuaded the governor and got the enterprise underway, the Englishmen in charge of Bombay Hospital wouldn’t believe Indian scalpels are any good! They still won’t!” Her eyes narrowed. “I wonder whether there’s a rotten British manufacturer who’s put the word out against Adi’s knives.”
Put the word out? I set aside the question of individual versus collective character of the British people and focused on the possibility of a new suspect.
Hoisting myself from my chair I dropped a kiss on her still-flushed cheek, saying, “You’ve given me an idea.”
As I dragged on my boots and fetched my hat from the stand, she called, “Where are you going? Mama bought fresh drumsticks for our curry.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I assured her, tapping on the broad-brimmed solar, a mainstay for gents in the tropics. “Going to chat with the darling man. He buys surgical supplies.”
“Oh!” She sat up, all eyes. “To get him to buy Adi’s scalpels?”
“No.” I grinned. “To find out whose profits are threatened by Adi’s business!”