Diana gasped. “Murder!”
The hotel room seemed to have shrunk, its blue papered walls closing in. I leaned forward, keeping my voice steady. “Start at the beginning. Who’s dead?”
He took a shaking breath, glanced from Diana to me and seemed heartened. “Satya Rastogi, my business partner.”
Diana said, “Partner? At a law firm?”
He shook his head slowly. “I’m no good at that, Di. Lost my first case. Not cut out for the law, Papa said.” He went on in a rush, “It happened like this. A gentleman from Zanzibar hired me. He was accused of theft at the shipping office where he worked. My client claimed to be away from town the day the funds went missing. But he’d traveled alone and no one else could vouch for him. So the judge asked me whether my client was truthful. How could I give him that assurance? It’s against everything I believe in. Parsis must not lie!”
Diana’s lips made a rueful smile. “You wouldn’t swear to it, so you lost the case?”
He grimaced. “I quit. And I quit the law too—I’d be a rank failure at it. I worked for a bit at Kolah’s pharmacy. Then I thought I’d try my hand at business.”
Diana asked, “What was the venture?”
Brightening, he said, “Surgical tools. They’re all made in Britain. Scalpels, calipers, prongs, clamps, everything. And British steel is expensive. Papa’s friend Jamshedji Tata had petitioned the government to make Indian steel, but they refused. He said there was a small forge in Nasik. So, I thought, they’ve got steel, why can’t we make scalpels?”
Diana grinned. “Oh, well done!”
Adi went on with the enthusiasm of a professor touting his pet subject. “Forging steel was a closely guarded secret during the Mughal empire. Lohar craftsmen made steel swords—it’s a matter of heating iron in the presence of coal. Carbon integrates with the iron, you see?”
Diana wrinkled her nose. “Chemistry! So Papa gave you a start?”
Adi pulled back. “Certainly not. I didn’t want to rise because of Papa’s money. I took a loan from a businessman, Merwanji Cama.”
Diana’s lips made an O, but her eyes gleamed with admiration.
Adi sighed. “But I’m no metallurgist! Satya was from a family of goldsmiths, and he’d studied chemistry, so we set up a partnership to plate our tools with silver. Leased a warehouse, hired staff, and bought equipment. Our scalpels were hand tooled and neat, plated by Satya, who became our silversmith.”
“So what went wrong?”
Adi’s face tightened. “No one will buy them! The head of Bombay Hospital asked me to stamp ‘Made in UK’ on them—a lie.”
He thrust a hand through his short hair. “I declined and begged him to give us a chance. I wanted to prove Indians can achieve something, to feel some pride. We can make things in India instead of importing them from Lancashire and Manchester.”
Diana whispered, “You’re right, Adi.”
He shook his head. Voice low, Adi said, “It’s not enough to be right, I needed people to listen! But there’s no place in this modern world for morals.”
I could scarcely believe that Adi was so changed. Clearing my throat, I said, “This silversmith. He was killed?”
Adi nodded, acknowledging he could no longer avoid the issue. “Satya Rastogi. We were together at Oxford. We got to be good friends.”
“And you’re a suspect?”
Hearing the consternation in my voice, he gave a crooked smile. “I found him. Dying. The blade in his throat.”
“He was alive?”
Adi winced. “He kept swiping at it. The shock on his face. He bled so much.”
I swore. “You touched the knife?”
“He couldn’t speak, see? The knife wouldn’t let him. I only moved it.”
I groaned. “God, Adi.”
“He was choking, Jim. Poor chap tried to tell me something.”
I stared at him. “Did he say a name?”
Adi covered his face. “I don’t know! It made no sense!”
“What did he say?”
He squinted with effort and spoke slowly. “‘Sona. Na beych-ney doh.’ That’s what it sounded like.”
Diana translated, her dark eyes enormous. “‘Gold. Don’t let them sell it.’ What does it mean? What gold?”
Adi’s voice rose an octave. “We had no gold. It was never a part of our process.”
I quizzed him about it, why he’d gone to the workshop that day and what he’d planned to do next, but his answers were vague. He’d merely wanted to check on things. He could not recall. A strange dying message and his young partner wheezing and sputtering in his arms. No wonder Adi couldn’t remember much.
He said, “My staff. They came from lunch just as Satya … drew his last breath.”
“So they did not hear his final words?”
He shook his head.
Diana asked, “But, Adi, why? Why did Papa send you here?”
He leaned back, shoulders slumped. “He said I should go to America. Emigrate. No hope of justice in Bombay, he said.”
Diana sucked in a sharp breath. “Papa said that? Papa? But—”
Adi cut her off. “He believed in English law. Utterly. But not since…” He tilted his head.
Not since the deaths of Bacha, Adi’s wife, and Pilloo, a teenage cousin whom the Framjis had fostered. The two girls’ murders had been officially ruled suicides—even though I’d hunted down the culprits and brought them to justice.
But sending Adi to America? My chest felt as though it was being squeezed by a relentless hand. Diana’s brother, a fugitive. My finest friend on the run for the rest of his life. I could not let that happen.
Recalling the plainclothesmen outside, I asked Adi, “Under whose name did you take these rooms?”
“Yours,” Adi said, his tone as dry as leaves curling in a summer gully.
The sound of it spawned a sliver of hope. “Did you give your name elsewhere?”
He swallowed. “Haven’t used it since the voyage. I stayed with our aunt and uncle in London, then took a train here, to Liverpool. Why?” His voice cracked on the last word.
I watched him, uncertain how much to reveal. If he was already buckling under the strain, I would not burden him with more. Eyes flashing, he demanded, “Jim, why?”
I met Diana’s questioning look and admitted, “Scotland Yard is looking for you, Adi. A pair of detectives stopped me in front of the hotel. They had your photograph.”
Adi’s mouth fell open. “How do they know I’m here?”
I shrugged. “They probably check all ports.”
“I took a P and O clipper. Papa was sending his agent to England with contracts. When this mess erupted, he had me take the ship instead.”
“You traveled under the agent’s name?”
Adi turned. “Certainly not. I showed my passport and explained that I was replacing him.” He frowned. “They have a photograph of me? What does it mean?”
Bombay Constabulary’s Chief Superintendent McIntyre might have sufficient evidence to arrest Adi, but I didn’t say that.
“Means every shipping agent probably has it too.”
Diana squeezed her eyes shut, her voice a whisper. “What can we do?”
Adi dropped into a chair and clutched his head.
Even if he got to New York, he’d be glancing over his shoulder at every corner. Though the temporary reprieve might revive him, how long could a man live like that? The wretchedness of it would erode that essential quality in Adi, his pride in doing the right thing. In my army days I’d seen sepoys discouraged by unfairness or harsh punishment. It made a man bitter and deeply resentful.
I sniffed a carafe from the sideboard, found it to be water, and poured. “You were coming to us in Boston?”
Adi licked his lips. “Didn’t want to land on you in such a state, but … when I went to the White Star office, the agent demanded my name. Such gimlet eyes the bloke had! What if he knew? I couldn’t risk it. Fobbed him off and sent you that cable.”
“It’s well you did. He’d have instructions to notify the Yard if he spotted you,” I said, handing him the glass.
“God!” He downed the contents then stared at the crystal in his hand. “So there’s nowhere safe. I can’t stay in London with Aunt Dinbai endlessly. Already Uncle Shapur is puzzled, because I handed over Papa’s contracts a week ago. He asked when I meant to return home.”
Diana sat beside him. “Adi, this is nonsense. We’ve got to clear your name. English law may be flawed, but I trust the judges who wield it.”
Trust her to see how hopeless it would be for Adi to travel to America. He’d held together so far but already his composure had sloughed several layers.
I said, “Diana’s right. We need evidence that puts you in the clear. We’ve got to find the killer.”
Adi narrowed his eyes, his look remote. “You’re certain it’s not me.”
Diana grinned a wide smile. I chuckled. “I’d bet my life on it.”
“Why?”
“If you’d killed him, you’d have the sense to leave before people caught you embracing the victim, spattered with his blood.”
But it was more than that. I could see Adi hammering a sharp rebuke if a fellow cut corners or cheated. He might even punch someone who harmed a child. But I couldn’t imagine him taking a knife to a man’s throat. If by some bizarre sequence of events he did, it would eat at him night and day. His was the life of the moral high ground. To know himself a killer would hollow out his very being.
He absorbed my words and gave a sideways nod. Rubbing his forehead, he said, “But … to go back? How?” He leaned against the cushion, assessing some complex internal calculation.
His closed look sent a twinge of worry through me. What didn’t he want me to know? What were we getting into, exactly?
Hoping to clear our heads, Diana and I walked along Bath Street overlooking Princes Dock and the river Mersey. The bay gleamed, a thousand lights reflected from lampposts and dinghies, skiffs and boats of all sizes. As we strolled across a bridge Diana stopped to watch people on the shore. In the late summer, ill-clad denizens strutted along the river walks, people from across the empire in strange combinations of garments, all manner of hats and scarves of mismatched colors. So many of us. After all, Liverpool was the “gateway to the Americas,” linking old world with new. The smell of rotting debris in the river enveloped us all.
“Poor Adi!” she said, gloved hands gripping the iron railing. “He wants to do something for India. What a mess he’s got into.”
Keeping an eye out for pickpockets, I’d been thinking of Bombay too, of the people I had to interview. Chief Superintendent McIntyre was charged with keeping the peace in Bombay, which, above all, meant weeding out dissidents. I asked, “Did Adi get, ah, political, after we left?”
“You mean, did he get even more interested in politics?” Diana tilted her head to consider. “He went to Calcutta a few times. His letters were full of the horrid conditions there. And Burma. He wrote that the price of food was shocking. Then the cholera epidemic last year…”
Adi, a revolutionary? It was a bizarre idea, like expecting a priest to lead an army.
Eying the strolling folk below, Diana said, “I think I understand why, all those years ago, the British came to India and dug in a foothold. Why the East India Company carted in munitions by the shipload and created an army.”
Her hat brim hid her face. I asked, “What d’you mean?”
She pointed. “Look at them. Bedraggled and poor.” She gave a long sigh. “Newspapers say they’re building bathhouses all over the UK. There’s work in factories and mills, railways and mines. Why else would all these people come?”
“But the East India Company?”
She spoke with an ache in her voice. “Look, Jim. Sooty faces. Those children crowded in doorways. Britain tried to cure its own poverty by taking from us.”
She saw the affairs of countries as an exchange between people, rather as a thief in need might club down a traveler. How wrong I’d been about her. I’d imagined that her privileged upbringing had insulated her. Perhaps those within the street are inured to its cruelty, but standing outside it, she could see all too well.
Diana said, “I can’t bear to think of Mama and Papa facing this alone. Ma afraid to go out, Papa selling land to pay lawyers. We have to help.”
Cocooned in our own thoughts, we turned back to the hotel. With a start I recalled the task Dupree had assigned me, the Petersmith problem. Blast, I had to settle that before we could go to India. How long would it take?
Which brought me to another sharp-edged question: how could we get Adi safely home? He was wanted by the Metropolitan Police, so might well be noticed taking passage on a ship. Scotland Yard would examine steamers to the continent, but would they search liners going back to Bombay? My chest felt as though a small elephant had decided to sit on it.
Adi, the scholarly, mild-mannered lawyer, the friend who’d tucked a wad of cash into my breast pocket when I’d set out for Lahore, who could not bear to see me disguised as a beggar because of the stale smell of labor and vomit. Diana’s brother, arrested like a common criminal and held in an English jail? I had to spare him that humiliation.