What now? I did not want to leave, but could do no more for Bala, so I steered toward McIntyre’s office. My progress through the building generated stares, which I ignored. Yes, I was dressed in native garb, but they’d seen me come and go as such before and should be accustomed to it.
“Hoy!” A burly havildar stood before McIntyre’s door, blocking me.
“Out of my way before you do yourself an injury,” I snapped, without thinking.
His eyes bulged. He turned, facing me as I strode past.
At the wide mahogany desk, McIntyre’s gaze jerked up from his file. In a moment he’d grasped the situation and said, “I’ll get Jameson.”
“I’ve just come from him,” I said, then glanced down at my kurta where the old mali’s bleeding had soaked through. My heart squeezed like a clenched fist. How could he survive such blood loss?
“Adi’s factory gatekeeper,” I said, my tone bitter as I dropped into a chair. “He was assaulted while I was inside the factory. Some blighter had just been rifling around.”
My forearms were trembling. I leaned them on the desk, pressed my forehead to them, and closed my eyes. The darkness seemed to help.
McIntyre said something over my head, then told me, “Patrick’s a good surgeon, the best. Here, take this.”
“The mali was bringing me flowers,” I said, then drained the glass he handed me. It burned going down. Why was he wasting good liquor?
Forgetting to moderate my tone, I demanded, “Why did you release him? I left him here because he was afraid. He knew something. He’d have told me, in time.”
Something in McIntyre’s blue gaze shifted. “You don’t work here, you know,” he said mildly.
“Had nowhere else to stash him,” I mumbled, gazing at the empty glass.
“Could have taken him home with you,” said the boss, “but that would be interfering with a witness.”
I winced. “Someone’s interfered with him now.”
“Any witnesses?”
I frowned. “The blasted killer, I suppose. Or someone who searched the factory. The assault—I didn’t see it. Bala was lying near the gate.”
“You’ve just brought in the key witness against your brother-in-law. An injured witness who may die?”
I stared, astonished at his dry tone. “What? You think I’d—? You think—”
He sucked his teeth, then said, “He did say something, when he was here. No”—he held up a hand—“no one pressured him. He was fed, given a separate cell and a bedroll. No one molested him. They seemed to think the captain sahib would be irate.”
Why was he so jolly about it? “What did he say?” I asked.
“Bicycle. Or basket. Couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. Make any sense to you?”
I stiffened, hearing the whir of wheels just outside the gate, crunching as they pushed through gravel. That clank—was it from a metal kickstand being thrown up? I searched my memory. Had there been a bicycle leaning on the wall beside the gate? I’d been occupied with opening the gate itself.
“No,” I said, “if a bicycle was against the wall, I’d have noticed it. But there’re bushes too. I didn’t look between them.” I frowned. “Heard one outside the gate. Didn’t see the rider.”
He sat, rummaged in his drawer and pulled out his pipe. Tapping it meditatively, he asked, “Why’d you go to the factory?”
I paused. How much should I tell him? Would it work against Adi?
His fingers stilled and his eyes grew steely. “Well?”
“There could be more going on,” I said and told him about Banner’s reluctant admission.
McIntyre’s mouth tightened. “So. Satya Rastogi needed money—you’re sure?”
“It’s what Banner said. That’s a couple of weeks before Rastogi took off with Adi’s funds. An old debt? Gambling? He played a mean game of cards.”
A native voice spoke from behind me. “Sir?”
In accented Hindustani, McIntyre told a heavyset havildar, “Leave it here.”
After the fellow placed a garment on the table, saluted, and left, McIntyre said, “Go on. It’s for you. You can’t walk around like that. People will call out ambulances.”
Restored to good humor, he fussed about his pipe while I stripped off my sodden kurta and donned a clean khaki shirt that had been sized for a hippopotamus. Straightening the collar, I turned to thank him and found his narrow gaze intent upon me.
He pointed his pipe at my midsection. “Where’d you pick those up?”
My scars. I extracted my billfold and notebook from my ruined garment, saying, “Gifts from army days.”
Where was Satya’s key? I rummaged in the pockets, but found only my pencil stub and the heavy iron key for the factory. Damn, I’d lost the little silver one.
“Twelve years on the frontier,” he said. “And Burma.” His tone was reflective, and he hadn’t lit his pipe.
That missing key was crucial to Adi’s case. Rising to leave, I thanked him for the shirt.
“Hmm-mmm,” he said. “Walking around unarmed, again.”
I tried a smile. It didn’t hurt. “I’ll be all right. If Bala wakes, give me a shout, will you?”
“Mmm,” he said, returning his attention to the file before him.
On the way back to Adi’s factory, I bought a screwdriver and padlock. Then I retraced my steps to Satya’s office and scoured the floor.
Something gleamed by the ledge where I’d tripped. Bending, I scooped up the missing key with a sigh of relief. If only these walls could talk! But they remained stubbornly silent, and I had no Holmes along to spot the logical reason for the mali’s tragic assault.
Hammering the rear door latch into place with the screwdriver’s handle, I muscled in a pair of screws, then added the new lock and surveyed my handiwork. The latch dangled crookedly. Pathetic. It would not keep out a determined schoolboy, let alone a violent killer.
What had the thief taken from Adi’s factory? What had he been looking for? It was something fairly small, since he’d searched inside a pen stand.
I looked at Satya’s key, then tucked it into my wallet.
A weight settled on my shoulders as I thought of the old mali seeing me enter the factory, and deciding perhaps to gift some fragrant blooms for Adi’s home. A kind thought. It had earned him a blow to the head from which he might not recover. But why?
Someone had searched the factory, probably looking for Satya’s key. The thief had come armed. He hadn’t needed to use a scalpel on Bala Mali. If I’d accosted him in the factory, that weapon would have been for me. Feeling grim, I stalked through Crawford Market making a series of purchases which I carted to my Dockyard Road hideaway.
I returned in time to clean up for Diana’s dinner party and found her in our bedroom, in tears.
She said, “They say they’ve been called away. To decline an invitation just a few hours before the event—it’s the height of bad manners.” She sounded sad, rather than angry, as she flicked at the too-short sleeve of my billowing borrowed shirt.
“Who, sweet?”
“Miss Vakil’s father is a reputed barrister,” she said, and showed me the note from Miss Rata Vakil, which, while polite enough, looked to be hastily dashed off.
“Probably just as well. Doubt that Jameson will come,” I said, then told her of the assault on Bala, Adi’s aged gateman. She listened, lips parted, as I described his injury and the flowers that fell from his hands, blooms he’d likely gathered for me to bring to the house.
“Oh, the poor man! Who’d do a thing like that?”
It made me pause. “He told McIntyre, ‘Bicycle, basket.’ Fellow doesn’t speak English. He’d be too intimidated by the constables to say much. But McIntyre set him free, so he tried to tell him something. Di, I think … perhaps he can identify Satya’s killer.”
“Oh?”
I explained, “That could be what he meant. I’d asked if he saw someone walking up the drive the morning Satya was killed. Bala was watering plants or weeding, when perhaps someone wheeled in a bicycle.”
Hope shone in Diana’s deep brown eyes. “It’s a lead, isn’t it? Could it get Adi off the hook?”
“There are thousands of bicycles in Bombay. Many with baskets attached, or hanging from the handlebars. Not enough to go on.”
Sighing, Diana pulled the bell. When Gurung arrived, she asked him to bring me bathwater. Apparently, we were going to dress for the evening, regardless. When he returned, I hurried to wash and don suitable attire, then went down to find Adi.
He was in the hall, so I handed him two keys to his factory and told him about the new padlock. Then I narrated what had befallen the mali.
He stared, unmoving, his dark eyes wounded. “He’s alive?”
“He’s with Jameson.”
Deep hollows curved at his Adi’s temples. On our shipboard adventure, he’d been both appalled and delighted at his subterfuge. Now the waiting, the inactivity must be intolerable.
I asked, “All those months, Satya must have confided in someone. Adi, think back to when he was most relaxed, most at ease. Who did you see him with?”
Addie frowned at the window, his look inward. Rubbing his forehead, he said, “Satya wasn’t the sort to kick back after work. He was always the same—quiet, diligent. I’d seen him speak with Bala, the gardener, about plants … the weather, rainy season, oh, I don’t know.”
Just now, when I’d told him about the attack on the gardener, his first question had been one of concern, hadn’t it? But—wait. He’d actually asked, was the mali alive? A logical question, but one that the assailant might also ask. I felt as though a tremor passed through the earth below me.
So I watched Adi closely as we followed Gurung into the foyer. I asked, “Bala Mali—where did he come from? Did you find him, or did Satya?”
Adi inspected the doorway and gazed out at the curved path.
“Satya hired him for the garden,” he said. “The old chap came from Satya’s home, I think. Maybe a family retainer?”
A piece of the puzzle clicked into place. “He knows Satya’s plan, even if he does not realize it. The killer is afraid he knows enough.”