After the dishes were cleared away, Diana and I remained at the table with Mrs. Framji. She was describing their plan to get Adi out on bail, when the house phone shrilled in Burjor’s office. We heard him answer with a grunt, say a few words. Then his footsteps thumped toward the dining room.
Unshaven and in his dressing gown, Burjor spotted me from the door and said, “McIntyre’s called you. Something about the watchman. You’re to go right away.”
“Wait! I’m coming too,” cried Diana, and went to put on shoes.
We headed out with Mrs. Framji’s words ringing in my ears. “I hope the poor man’s recovered!”
Jameson had his stethoscope on the mali’s chest when Diana and I hurried into the ward. When the medico was done, Bala raised a hand and tried to speak, his voice almost inaudible. Another garbled effort was also incomprehensible. Then I understood. He’d asked in Hindustani, “How is my garden, sahib? Does it survive the heat?”
“I watered it myself,” I assured him in the same tongue.
Jameson gave me an amused look. Here was my principal witness, and we were discussing his plants.
The mali joined his hands, his fingers so crooked they left a gap. “Why did you put me in jail, sahib? My breath was stopped. The darkness … nothing there. Only memories. Forty years ago, I had a wife and three small ones, but in just one week they sickened and died. Many people died that month. The cremation cart was full. Bodies piled, awaiting the woodcutter’s wagons. Why did I live all these years?”
Diana bent and touched his hand. It was a poignant contrast, her delicate fingers against the mali’s gnarled palm.
The old man told her, “Now the garden is my family, the trees are mothers, aunts, relatives; the plants my grandchildren.” He went on. “Do not take me from there, sahib. There I have lived and there I will die. Bury me there. Do you promise?”
Diana said in a hushed voice, “Adi leases that place. It does not belong to us.”
The mali replied, “I have no child to light my pyre. So do not take me to the burning ghat. Bury me in your garden. Plant flowers over me.”
Clearing my throat, I asked, “Who struck you, Bala?”
His weary eyes filled, the lines of his face crowded like a topological map. “I am an unlettered man, sahib. How can I tell who to trust?” Hands folded, he begged my pardon.
“You did nothing wrong.”
He smiled, showing his gums. “I am a foolish old man. I did not see who came behind me.”
Diana grimaced in sympathy.
I frowned. “Bala, you were struck with your own tool—who grabbed it from your hand?”
He blinked rheumy eyes. Was it possible that he could not recall it? In my early boxing days, I’d been knocked out, and come to without remembering anything past the first round.
“Bala,” I said, “we think Satya was doing things without telling Adi sahib. Do you know anything about it?”
“I knew him, sahib. From when he was a small boy,” said the mali. “Always reading, singing, playing. His father said he would be a fine gentleman! He would run home from school and ride on my shoulders. But then … these months, such a piteous sight.
“At night I used to see him through the windows. He would put his face in his hands. Once, I could not bear it. I went and spoke to him. He cried out as though I was a devil. When he saw it was me, he wept like a child. Once again I held his head against my chest and consoled him, just as when he had been whipped as a boy.”
“Did he say what troubled him?”
“No, sahib, only that it was hopeless. That it was his own fault. So I helped him.”
“How?”
“Just keeping things in my hut. At night a man would come on a bicycle. I waited at the gate and put what was given in his basket.”
“The bicycle with a basket! Who is he?”
“I do not know his name. His face was hidden.”
“What was inside the parcels?”
“I did not look, sahib.”
Another dead end! I groaned in a cloud of despair.
He said, “But one bundle is still in my room, inside a sack of hay.”
We rode to Dady Lane posthaste, speaking little on the way. My insides wound tight with anticipation, hardly daring to hope, I urged Gurung to speed, while Diana kept her own counsel.
At Adi’s factory, dismounting from the carriage, she said, “Wait, Jim,” and took an old lantern from a nail on the factory door. She reached upward, fingers searching the ledge over it, then made a satisfied sound. Moments later, a match flared. As the acrid smell wafted over us, she stooped and lit the wick.
Replacing the glass flute, she handed it to me. “Find it, whatever it is. We’ve got to solve this.”
Bala’s hut wasn’t locked, and if it had been, it would not have mattered. Slatted timbers had rotted away, leaving gaps in the walls. The door creaked open under my touch.
Diana waited outside while I swung the lantern, spilling light over the mud floor of the mali’s shack. A small Primus stove stood in a corner by a pan and some bottles. Along one side lay a bedroll, not unlike my military issue on campaign. The mali’s wash drooped from a short clothesline bearing a crumpled dhoti.
Sweeping aside the grey cloth, I ducked under the hemp rope and raised my lamp to the corners. Two sacks lay along the wall, one open at the mouth, spilling coal.
The second was tied. Setting down the lantern, I tried to pry open the knot with shaking fingers. It was no use. Reaching to my boot I yanked out my blade and made quick work of the rope. The earthy smell of hay and jute dust rose as I reached inside. My fingers closed over a lump. I gripped and drew it out.
The shapeless burlap wrapping was tied with raw jute. I tugged it apart, peeling back layers until something gleamed in the weak lamplight. In my shaking hands I held a golden statue of Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, each burnished curve gleaming.
About ten inches tall, the piece felt dense, as heavy as a baby. For this, a young man had died? A life cut short in the midst of some devious and complex plan. Why was it so important, so crucial? What was Satya doing with this?
I’d never met him, but perhaps I knew him better than anyone else. Each person had seen one side of him—he’d persuaded Adi, Burjor, Jussawalla, and the insignificant mali to his ends.
My grip tightened on the golden idol. Satya had forged the promissory note for this? Had he planned to be off before Burjor confronted him? If he was going to flee, emptying Adi’s account would be the last step. He would have run—but the killer had preempted him.
Hearing the mali’s story, I’d pitied the young man I’d never met. Now I felt as though I was reading a letter, a confession that lacked the last page. One more piece—just one more and I would have it.
Standing in the mali’s sad hut, I made Satya a promise. Whatever he wanted so desperately, it was likely why he’d been murdered. If I learned his plan, I’d follow it and see where it took me.
Somewhere along the way I’d find his killer. I only hoped that by then, I would recognize who he was and know what I should do.