Who should I be today? I fingered the linen suits Diana had assembled for me, white, tan, grey, brown. Beside my formals hung a blue serge suit and two in dark wool.
The chanawala I’d set to watch Adi’s factory had nothing to report. The previous week I’d watched Adi’s employees and spoken to their neighbors, but still didn’t know whether they’d been involved in Satya’s plans. Then there was that disconnect about who’d gone for the police, the mali or one of the staff. Was there something to this or was it just the jumbled confusion from what they’d witnessed?
I chose a tan suit to work on my new case: to determine how someone had stolen bullion from the mint, one I needed to solve without attracting official attention. How would the redoubtable Mr. Sherlock Holmes do it?
No doubt he’d smoke a pipe or play his violin at odd hours of the night to produce a flash of inspiration. When explained to the modest Dr. Watson, his observations and deductions seemed reasonable, even obvious. Cause and effect. Everyday occurrences developed special significance when placed in the framework of human motives.
Trouble was, I was awash in minutiae, with a threadbare theory to sew together the scraps. I had to identify Satya’s key and discover what he’d stashed, because it was likely someone had murdered him for it. Perhaps the killer intended to search Satya’s person, but Adi’s arrival prevented it. So, who was he?
The dining room was empty when I served myself from tureens on the sideboard. A glance at the grandfather clock showed it was ten, so the family had already breakfasted. How had I slept so late?
I slathered spicy mango preserve called amba-kalyo on my toast and polished it off with soft curds of scrambled eggs. Steepling fingertips over my plate, I considered Padamji’s domain at the mint. With eyes closed, I mentally walked through the vestibule and corridors to the forge. Besides the foundry employees and guards, who else entered that chamber? The forge had to be fed periodically with gold, therefore whoever brought supplies also had access. Padamji had not mentioned this part of his process.
Cooled, the gold bars were transferred to the vault next door and stacked into crates—according to Padamji, a task performed by those selfsame foundry workers. Once sealed, there would be little chance to extract a bar. Lastly, the boxes would be wheeled down the ramp to load well-guarded carriages. So how was a five-and-a-half-pound bar removed from the mint? All the rest might be managed, the fake hollowed out in something like Satya’s laboratory, to be assembled into a new piece by an expert forger. But to leave the mint with a seven-inch gold bar undetected was no easy matter. Only Padamji walked in and out in his street clothes. He’d just hung up his jacket and donned an apron over his vest.
Could he have been an unknowing courier, a bar slipped into his coat pocket unnoticed? Impossible, I thought, touching my linen jacket where the lump of a kerchief disturbed its neat lines. No, Padamji could not be oblivious to such a weight dragging down his clothes. And then, how was a fake bar replaced inside the vault?
The air vents high in the walls were grilled. My pulse jerked as an idea took form. No one could enter, but … could a bar be slipped through? But then, how would it be collected?
Voices sounded at the door. Gurung, and someone else. Visitors?
“I’m coming!” cried Mrs. Framji, hurrying from the kitchen. She bore a tray in one hand, scooping up folds of pale blue sari with the other. “Are they here?”
Diana twinkled a smile from the doorway. “It’s Allie and Manek, come to visit.” Dressed in pink cotton today, she was impossibly pristine, a morning cloud gone astray. “Mama, you’re doing aachu meechu? They were married months ago!”
Curious, I headed toward the ladies, so different in age yet so alike in their excitement.
Mrs. Framji said, “It’s their first time here. Allie is a bride! How will you keep our customs in America?”
Ah. Parsi traditions and ceremonies, I thought, and began my retreat.
However, Mrs. Framji said, “Wait, Captain! Please stay. When Diana and you arrived, I was not well…”
Bidding Gurung to set the silver tray he carried on a table, she sprinkled water from a tumbler onto the foyer, then mopped it with a white cloth. Next she stooped to tap a small tray on the floor, leaving a design in white powder, saying, “Stamp it three, five, or seven times. Odd numbers for good luck.”
We heard voices outside. Diana swept open the door saying, “Manek, how good to see you! And Allie, welcome.”
She embraced the couple while I shook hands with Manek. Gone was the deathly pale lad I had once harangued in Matheran. Though his hairline rode farther up his forehead, he was trim in a neat suit and patent-leather shoes. Allie—I’d known her as a grey-garbed matron, his landlady Alice—beamed, looking a decade younger in a svelte yellow dress and large white hat. Greeting them, Diana’s mother directed Ganju to place a long flat stepstool over the chalk design ornamenting the tiles.
“Mrs. Framji!” said Manek, taking in the preparations. Face lit with emotion, he turned to his wife. “It’s the welcome you should have had at my uncle’s house. See the design on the floor, the silver sesh. That’s taken out for family!”
“Come, stand on the stool,” instructed Mrs. Framji, garlanding both with strings of tuberoses from the tray. Handing them a pair of envelopes, she applied a red dot upon each forehead. From the tray she gathered grains of rice in her palm, and pressed them to the couple’s foreheads.
All the while she chanted, “Ghanu-ghanu sukh johjo, sada sukhi sukhyara rehjo, sada hasta ramta rehjo, buddo-doso thajo!”
Diana translated, sotto voce, “May you see much happiness, always safe and secure, stay laughing and playing, live to be ancient—it means the blessing of a long life!”
Lastly, Mrs. Framji circled a closed fist in the air around the pair, cracked her knuckles to her temples, and tossed a shower of rice to the side.
Near my shoulder, Diana murmured, “That’s to be rid of the evil eye.”
Mrs. Framji swept the couple into her embrace, then said, “Diana, Captain, your turn!”
Our turn? Manek and Allie stepped off the stool, while Diana tucked an arm through my elbow and propelled me up onto it. Protesting halfheartedly, I complied.
To receive Mrs. Framji’s blessing felt as though I’d been given a medal of honor. Smiling, she reached upward to place scented garlands over our necks. I stooped to receive mine, the damp blooms smooth against my neck.
With her thumb, Mrs. Framji applied a ceremonial red smear to my forehead. Palming grains of rice, she pressed them to the red paste. A wave of emotion hit me then, for her touch was familiar, yet I could not recall who might have caressed me so! Throat closed, I ducked my head against the unexpected tug of emotion. Mrs. Framji touched my shoulder, then adorned Diana in like manner.
Taking a gold chain from her own neck, she put it around Diana’s, speaking in Gujarati, to which Diana replied, protesting. Then Mrs. Framji pulled a ring off her forefinger and handed it to me. “This was my father’s. Will it fit? Go on, try it.”
The jewelry slipped over my little finger to sparkle against my skin.
A cherished gift. I swallowed, incapable of speech as Diana and I stepped off the stool. When I bent to touch Mrs. Framji’s feet as I’d seen sepoys do, she clucked at me and hugged us both. I doubled over to gather the Framji women in grateful arms.
In this poignant moment I thought of Satya. Had he no one who tethered him this way? Had his mother, that tough martinet, ever held him near when he was a boy? Once he was a grown man, who did he rely on? Divorced from his kin by a Western education, part this, part that like me, had his unreconciled halves repelled each other? A slow fog rolled through my veins. Satya must have lived an achingly lonely life.
Once Burjor arrived, luncheon proceeded with warm chatter. I felt caught in a dream, as though watching myself smile, pass the pilaf, and decline the wine.
Did other men feel they were stepping between multiple worlds? A day ago I’d lived the rough life of a banana seller, making barely enough to purchase vada-pav, dependent for my dinner upon a sandwich Mrs. Framji sent with Gurung. Adi’s employees evidenced no windfall. Faisal was desperately short of cash, while Vishal earned barely more than a kelawala himself.
Diana said, “I’ve never felt so … isolated. Made me think of little Chutki, when she came to us, so alone. Why, last week, Mrs. Sureewala’s man said she wasn’t in, although I heard her inside. Schoolfriends pass me at the Asiatic Society Library as though they don’t know me. I was so miffed, I walked out!”
She sent me an apologetic glance. People are asses. It’s not your fault.
The hurt in her voice gouged me. I’d long suffered cuts and slights, beginning with childhood fights at the orphanage. Each new injury piled onto the mountain of past disdain: a bastard with no name, family, fortune or skill. Not respectable, immediately suspect, beneath contempt. I’d thought it was what I deserved, until I met Adi and Diana.
Their outrage when I accepted such common abuse had surprised me, moved me. Smirks and scorn once jabbed like tiny needles in my gut. Now they seemed irrelevant.
Perhaps I craved Diana’s good opinion more than a husband should. And perhaps I set Burjor and Mrs. Framji too high above other beings as exemplars of saintly goodness. Adi too, with his quick intelligence and calm judgment, was as near to blood as I’d ever had.
Diana had been cosseted and admired all her life. In Boston she’d entered white-only establishments and train cars as though she had every right. If her sun-kissed complexion caused doubt, her fine clothes and manners laid them to rest. Now her own beloved society shunned her, because of our union. I had not realized how much it bruised her and could do nothing to help. Under the ache of her defeated, angry helplessness, I set my face to parade rest and stuffed a forkful into my mouth.
Allie covered Diana’s hand. “Forty years ago a Parsi called Shapur Edalji converted to Christianity—after that no Parsi would hire him! He went to England to be a pastor, I think. When we got married, Manek’s people wouldn’t even see him. He needed work, so he tried the Sassoon docks. There, his pedigree stood in the way.”
Diana’s brown eyes echoed my incomprehension. “His background? Why?”
Allie shrugged. “Not Jewish. But he was so brave. Tried the railways, Port Trust, Victoria docks and banks. Hopeless, of course, without a reference. Those were hard days—my boardinghouse barely brought in enough to feed us. But Manek’s doing well at the bookstore now. Everyone wants to read … young people, most of all.” She sent her new husband a fond look.
Manek took up the tale with gusto. “They spend hours on window seats thumbing through my books but can’t afford them! So, I turned half the inventory into a lending library. Sometimes it earns ten rupees a day!”
“Oh, well done!” said Adi, shaking his hand.
“What about you, Adi?” Diana asked, teasing. “Closeted in your room for days. Last time you did that, you were reading about surgical instruments! What’re you up to now?”
Adi shrugged, a grin escaping his modest manner. “It’s not ready yet, Di. Like Mr. Holmes here”—he gestured at me—“can’t say until I’m ready.”
I made a disgusted grunt. “More like plodding old Watson.” I dug in my vest pocket and held out Satya’s key. “It’s this dratted thing. Need to find its partner, the lock, see what’s in there. It is, literally, the key to this puzzle.”
Adi took it and twirled it in his fingers. “It’s funny, really. That’s what I’ve been doing. Seen the newspapers?” He smacked the stack beside his plate. “Every day some burglary or other. Yesterday a cotton warehouse was looted, day before, a shipping office.”
Allie said, “Shops at Kolaba have all put up grilles. Feels like a jail when I enter. Three were burgled last month.”
Burjor said, “People are hungry. This market is tougher than I’ve ever seen.”
Manek added, “I daren’t leave cash at my bookstore. The restaurant next door was robbed a few weeks ago.”
“That’s it!” Adi cried. “That’s what I’m working on. A fireproof safe that can’t be broken into or carried away.” He spread his hands. “Here’s how locks work. When the door, box, or safe is closed, a bolt sticks into the frame. It won’t slide back out, because it’s stopped by a series of pegs, sometimes in a cylinder. Now the job of the key is to lift the pegs inside, which then allows the bolt to slide out, and open the door.”
He ran a finger over the key’s serrated edge. “This might open a Yale lock. While back, a chap called Linus Yale came up with the idea of the cylinder. A spring pushes each pin into the bolt, so the ridges of the key much be just so, to raise it to the correct height. Only then will the tumbler rise, the cylinder turn, and the bolt slide away. My lock won’t have springs—cheaper that way, but equally strong.”
He hadn’t been so animated in a while. I asked, “So what d’you think this key opens?”
He rubbed it between finger and thumb. “It’s new. Modern. Five pins. Could be something quite small, a safe, or a cabinet.”
When Allie and Manek departed I returned to our bedroom, sat at Diana’s desk, and browsed my notebook. All night it had troubled me, a disconnect, a contradiction, hiding in these pages. Adi had found Satya choking on his own blood, had broken his fall and held him. But there were three other people nearby. Two employees and the mali had rushed to answer his calls.
“Jim?” Diana said, behind me.
“Mmm.” I turned another page. Where was it, that first statement? Whose was it?
“Dearest, let me help! Why must you always work alone?”
I looked up, startled at her tone.
She turned away, shaking her head.
“Wait.” I got up and pointed to the chair. “You jot it down. I’ll find it.”
She perched and took up the pencil, waiting as I sat on the bed and flipped pages. I said, “Someone’s lied, but I don’t know who. Here’s what we got from Adi…”
I scoured my notes. “Here.” I found Diana waiting patiently, and dictated, “Faisal Khan—he said Adi sent Vishal the accountant for the police. Faisal stayed with Adi until the constable arrived.”
Over the next half hour, we checked other statements to see which concurred.
Diana jotted them down as I read. Returning to where I’d stuck in my thumb, I said, “The mali said he returned with a mounted policeman, riding behind him.”
Her lips tightened. “One of them is lying. Vishal or the mali.”
I steepled my fingers, planning my next visit.
“What will you do?” she asked.
I smiled. “Yesterday a fellow came to our kitchen door—he had on a uniform?”
“The gas-walla from Bombay Gas Company. He checks the meter and the stove.”
“Think you can rustle up the sort of jacket he wore? And that thin cap?”
She shot to her feet. “And a clipboard. Let me see what I can do. When d’you need it?”
“Tomorrow will do nicely.”
She grinned, fingered through my clothes to pick something out, then rushed off to her sewing machine.
Next I went to Adi’s room and told him I needed something that looked like a tool that a gas meter man might use.
He closed his book and asked, “Why?”
I glanced at the title—“The Memoirs!”
His pale face split in a smile. “You left it in the morning room. Did you read ‘The Adventure of the Crooked Man’? What a story! Mentions the Indian Mutiny.”
“Haven’t got that far,” I confessed. “Now, the fellow yesterday had some sort of equipment. I need something small that looks complicated.”
His eyes glinted. “Going to impersonate a gas-walla? I’ve got just the thing.”
I passed the Imperial Mint three times that day, once in the afternoon, and twice in the evening, each time carrying a newspaper or boxes to explain my presence. As far as I could tell, this went unnoticed. On the last pass, I bought a fag and stopped at the crossroad to light it. The smoke assailed my nostrils, so I stuck it between my fingers, and watched the broad grey structure of the mint.
A sweeper brushed leaves off the sidewalk in slow strokes, his back bent to his task. After some time a cart approached the side door, horses’ hooves clip-clopping on the cobbles. A turbaned man pushed a trolley down a ramp, loaded bundles of newspapers and trundled them inside. Three empty trolleys stood tucked against the side of the building like sleeping sentries.
An idea sizzled at the back of my mind, like the crackling of kindling catching flame. But when I tried to grasp it, it wafted away like smoke. The carriage left, the doors closed and the side street emptied. I wandered over and had a look at the trolleys, then left with a growing sense of wonder. Satya’s last words were about gold. And someone had stolen bullion from the Imperial Mint. That would be worth killing for. Were my two cases linked, somehow?
Was Satya behind it all? If so, he couldn’t have been working alone.