The trial proceeded slowly, while for two days I demanded access to Dutta, insisting that he, or whoever had hired him, was likely behind Satya’s murder. It was no good. Smith and McIntyre had both questioned him. He denied taking payment, but described the lawyer he met as a slender, well-dressed man. Dutta claimed he did not know his name or where he practiced.
“Bosh!” I cried. “Bunkum! How can seasoned investigators believe this?”
McIntyre said that I’d be arrested if I went near Dutta again.
I grumbled to Diana at teatime. “Back to square one. Still got nothing on Adi’s employees. Nor some thin, well-dressed blighter who bribed that witness!”
“Jim, dear,” said Diana, “about that key you’re trying to identify. You went all over to find what it unlocks, so I wonder, why not try a locksmith?”
I paused, my knife over the bowl of gooseberry jam. “Damn.”
“Oh?”
“Should have thought of it,” I grumbled, heaping the golden confection into the gash I’d cut in the side of a crusty, sweet-scented brun-pav.
“You would have, in time,” she assured me, which only made it worse.
I visited three locksmiths after court that very afternoon. “I can only tell you it is new, a modern design,” said the last of them, with the air of making a weighty pronouncement.
Disheartened, I returned to my traps, like a lobsterman checking empty cages. Outside Adi’s factory, my trusty chanawala sat on a low wall overlooking the crossroad.
I offered him a coin and my well-worn question. “Seen anyone going in?”
“Adab, sahib!” he greeted me, handing me a twist of peanuts. “For days there was no one. But yesterday, a woman entered.”
Afraid to hope for a break in my case, I asked, “How long was she inside?”
He scratched his chin. “One hour, perhaps more. It was noon and I wanted some food. But I stayed, sahib, and waited for her to leave.”
“Young? Old?”
He shrugged. “She was wearing a shawl. A brown chador over her head.”
“Did you see her face?”
“No, sahib. She came that way.” He pointed across the lane. “I saw her back.”
I handed him the agreed sum. “How did you know it was a woman?”
He grinned at me. “Her sari, sahib. And the way she walked.”
This was new. A woman visiting the factory? Looking for what? Could a woman have struck the old mali? It seemed unlikely, yet it was possible. There was an unknown player in this game—why couldn’t it be a woman?
I’d met only one related to this case, so I took myself off to question her.
All my life, I’d wanted siblings. Brothers with whom to race or leap into pools, sisters to bring me samples of cooking and wait expectantly for my verdict. Above all, I envied sepoys for their families, and sourly watched those who were careless of a proud pater or their mother’s embrace. Yet Satya had had a family and he could not get away from it fast enough. How could he squander such a gift? Descending from the bicycle tonga, I paid the sweating driver and approached Satya’s home.
Through the metal gate, I demanded an audience with Meera, Satya’s mother, and was shown into the rear courtyard. This time, I did not fold my hands in greeting but held her gaze.
She straightened, raised her chin and dismissed the waiting darwan.
After he’d passed out of earshot, I asked in Hindustani, “What have you to tell me?”
She raised an eyebrow in silence. I admired it—she had an investigator’s patience. Let the blighter blab, in time you’ll get what you seek.
But now I had no time for her parlor games. I said in a flat tone, “You came to the factory yesterday. Looking for something.”
She moved her head an inch. There was no give in this lady.
“My guard recognized you.”
My long shot struck true. Satya’s mother drew an audible breath.
I asked, “What were you searching for?”
Still she made no reply. I puzzled over it. She was a sonar, after all, daughter of a respectable goldsmith and matriarch of the clan.
“Were you looking for Satya’s things?”
She glanced away, her expression remote. Yet I did not think I was too far from the truth; she was still standing with me in the courtyard. Why hadn’t she sent someone to the Framjis to retrieve whatever it was? Ah. I guessed the answer: she did not want them to know.
“Did you find what you wanted?”
Her glance was dismissive. So no, then. She had not. Was she looking for Satya’s key or his statuette? Or was she party to his plans?
On a chance, I went on, “But that’s not the only time you were there.”
She jerked, her dark eyes shocked.
One blunder and I’d blow my advantage. Masking my surprise, I tiptoed into unknown terrain. “You knew the way, and that the entrance is on the side street.”
If a bluff is to succeed, it must be advanced boldly. There can be no caution, no testing the waters, no finding one’s way. One either struck true or went wide. The risk was egg on one’s face; I’d had my share and it hadn’t killed me yet. Still, it wasn’t my neck awaiting the noose, but Adi’s. I could not fail him.
“Satya took something with him, yes? Something that belonged to you, to the family. So, the first time, you went to demand its return. Did he deny it, refuse to listen? He wasn’t a child anymore. You had no control over him. Did he laugh at you?”
She shook her head. One foot rubbed the instep of the other.
I pushed harder. “No longer obedient. Toying with his scalpel—was he showing you what he’d made? Or … did he ignore you, as though your words were of no account. You picked up a blade and thrust it into his throat.”
She delicately wiped her mouth with the end of her sari. Her husky voice wobbled as she asked, “What proof do you have?”
I gave her a long look. “The innocent say, ‘I didn’t do it.’ The guilty say, ‘You can’t prove it.’” I sighed at strands of grey that laced her hair. “And here you are, asking for evidence.”
Tears welling, she pulled her sari over her face.
Smoke from the cooking fire blew around us. My palms tingled, some old memory trying to push forward, bringing restlessness. Not now, I thought, swallowing the sour tang in my mouth.
In a weary voice, she said, “He did not come home that night. So often in recent months. He had come the previous day. After he left a theft was discovered. Such a hangama! The men wanted to confront him, beat him! But mistri forbade it.”
“What did he take?”
She flicked away my question. “At dawn that day, after pooja, I went to his phac-ta-ry.”
“That day? August twenty-fifth?” The day Satya was killed.
“He was making tea. In pajamas and a torn undershirt. I begged him to come home. Living like a pauper, looking like a drunk, what will people think? Consider our name, our reputation. It was no use. So I left.”
I would have probed further, but some implacable quality had entered her face.
“And yesterday?”
“I remembered him, so I went. Now go.”
She pointed me at the gate, scrubbing a hand over her face. What did a mother feel, I wondered? Was a child an extension of oneself, a font of surprise and wonder, or a source of dismay, a constant stabbing at the heart? As I turned from her grief, a shout caught my attention.
I glanced around—a worker ran through the courtyard in his undershirt, crying out. Others took up the din in the floors above.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I called.
Satya’s mother was staring upward, her mouth open.
I followed her gaze, sniffing the air. What was that?
Smoke wisped from a window above.