The monsoon had pummeled Bombay on its way north, leaving the hot October air heavy and moist. My shirt blotched with sweat, I climbed the restful, dark stairwell to our quarters upstairs to change.
Diana stood at a window, looking out from under a bamboo chattai. Neatly rolled up, it would be soaked with water to cool the bedroom. In a sari, a light peach confection that seemed spun from early morning cloud, Diana looked fragile, barely there, like a bird that is all downy feathers. Her cotton blouse was sprinkled with lace.
She seemed absorbed. I said, “Diana?”
Her smile brightened the room. “You’re back. Did you find the superintendent?”
“I did.” I shrugged out of my jacket. “Everything all right?”
She took my coat. “I was watching Bhim, the new sais, bringing hay to the stables. Their lives are driven by such routine, such … clarity. He cares for the horses, feeds, cleans, and tends them. Everyone has their role. You”—she glanced up and saw my smile—“you recover people—the missing woman in Boston, the lost children, the boy from Pathankot. And—if someone’s dead, you help their loved ones learn what happened, to set things right. But … what do I do?”
Her fingers clutched my garment, one hand rubbing the knuckles of the other.
I touched her cheek. “You bring color and joy to the world. It would be mighty dull without you.”
A rueful smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “That’s kind, but … is it enough?”
Thinking about this, I peeled off my soaked shirt and took fresh clothes from the dresser. Her look inward, she went out with the used clothes and left me to bathe in the white tiled bathroom, where gleaming faucets hovered over a wide, porcelain sink.
Several years ago, her father Burjor had installed modern commodes at Framji Mansion—not the usual water closet at the end of the hall, but a washroom for each bedroom, a shocking luxury. A faucet over the snowy-white scalloped sink was matched by another against the wall. Someone had decided these humid chambers were really hothouses, so a curtain of greenery cascaded from pots by the window. Undressing, I stepped into a porcelain claw-footed tub and reached for the nearby bucket of water. A metal lota lay upside down nearby. Using it, I poured cool water over myself. Bombay had not yet discovered American shower baths.
When I’d worked for Adi two years ago, Diana had been keen to join my investigation. At the time I thought she wanted justice for her sister and sister-in-law, but now I realized it was more. Diana needed a purpose. On our voyage to Liverpool, I learned that she’d been with child, but had lost it while I was away. She bore it bravely, but now and then sorrow flickered across her features like clouds lit by silent lightning.
I washed and dressed quickly, mulling over McIntyre’s unpleasant revelation as I knotted my tie. Where was the missing cash? With Adi? If he’d secured it, I could not imagine why he would have hidden such an important detail.
Diana returned, her lips tight as she dropped a letter on her dresser. “I don’t believe it! Mrs. Sureewala says her party has had to be postponed. Indefinitely, she says! I wonder…” She stared at me. “Mama told her we’d arrived. Is this her way of—disinviting us?”
“The Sureewalas, your neighbors?”
She scowled at the letter. “The tone, it’s so—offhand. It’s not even an apology. Oh dear.” She huffed. “Jim, I think we’re being snubbed!”
I chuckled, sliding up my suspenders. “Since our livelihood does not depend upon it, I daresay we shall survive.”
Diana turned to me, her brown eyes wide. “How can you be so calm!? Don’t you see? What one does, the others will do as well. The Jeejeebhoys, the Petits, Readymoneys, Tatas! Once that happens, not even the Mehtas or Wadias will oppose the current. What about Mama and Papa, then? Jim, this is bad.”
I had no reply, so I opened my arms instead.
“Oh you!” She hummed, stepping in. Long moments of comfort followed. This, I thought, this was peace and quiet contentment. Diana stirred and frowned against my skin, fretting over the damage to her parents’ social station, damage we were likely to cause, might already have caused by our presence.
Shortly after, when we went down to lunch, I heard Adi speaking with his father in Gujarati. Switching to English, Burjor asked, “I kept it going as you wanted, but now, don’t you think it’s time?”
“To wind it up?” Adi replied. “I’ll have to. The rent alone is…” He shook his head.
“Your factory?” I guessed.
He nodded, his face glum. “With all this—chaos, we’ve sold nothing,” he said, disgusted. “So why keep the place, what’s the point? It was a dream, a fool’s errand.”
His partner’s death had drowned Adi’s efforts, his hopes. Just when he’d found something worth building, Satya’s murder had quashed it and put a pall over the future. I needed to show him progress on the case, but had barely begun.
Ganju, the bearer, came to tell us luncheon was ready. Entering the dining room, Diana turned on the overhead fan and directed him to draw the jalousie windows.
“Right,” I said, as we followed. “About the chaos. The case. Did Satya tell you he was withdrawing funds? From your business account, I mean.”
“I knew about the missing cash, two thousand fifty rupees,” said Adi, straight away.
I sighed. “How? How’d you know?”
Adi shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then admitted, “I went to Lloyd’s bank, where we have our account, that morning.”
I dropped into a chair. “That’s where you found out? Satya didn’t tell you?”
He seated himself across the table and rearranged the cutlery with close attention. “Satya was responsible for purchases. I oversaw sales. That morning, the bank manager called me on the telephone and asked me to visit.”
“Dammit, Adi,” I grumbled. “You’ve got to tell me these things. Is this why McIntyre’s set his sights on you? If Satya stole the cash, the police can claim you dashed back to stop him from skipping town. They could say he was cleaning out funds at the factory, and you caught him in the act.”
He frowned. “That’s nonsense. We don’t keep cash there.”
I groaned at his naïveté. “Don’t you see? It’s a motive. What I was counting on was that you had none. Now they could make a case for it: Satya stealing from you, leaving you and your employees high and dry.”
“They can’t believe I’d kill him over that?”
“It’s a lot of cash. Livelihoods destroyed. Enough to rile a man, even a peaceable one.”
I watched Adi fidget. Even on his worst days, when his wife’s death was being called a suicide and he was suspected of having driven her to it, he’d kept an even keel. Now he tugged at his cuffs and wound his watch chain through his narrow fingers, his motions jerky, unconscious.
Damn it all to hell. “Adi,” I said, “what else aren’t you telling me?”
He gave me a quick smile. “Nothing important, Captain. Nothing that matters.”
I probed, but he had regained his balance, and I did not want to jar it. Yet worry was gnawing at my insides because Adi’s clear eyes radiated a calm light, the sort of light that must have shone from the eyes of Rome’s martyrs.
I needed a plan to investigate Adi’s case, but so far, I had no clue who else could be involved. I suggested, “Can we invite your friend Tom Byram? I’d like a word with him.” We’d need his access to information, I thought, remembering the elegant, erudite man who ran the Chronicle.
Burjor had just joined us. His eyebrows shot up. “The editor?”
“Is there another?”
He dropped his chin to his considerable chest and considered it. “This business, I wouldn’t want it in the papers,” he said, eyes narrow in his broad face.
“No,” I agreed. “But we could use his sources. Someone must know something about Satya’s murder, and people talk. A servant, a groom, a rickshaw driver. We need an ear to the ground.”
He grunted. “And you think Byram can help? All right, I’ll call him.”
After he left, I asked Adi, “Is all well between them? He didn’t like the idea overmuch.”
Adi pulled in his lips, then said, “Things have changed since you left, Jim. We’re not, ah, so close to Byram these days.”
Two years ago, Byram had been a veritable member of the family! “Why ever not?”
Adi looked uncomfortable. “Because of you, actually.”
I felt as though he’d socked me with a hammer.
He explained, “Byram championed you. It put Papa’s back up.” He spread his hands, grimacing. “Don’t mistake me, Jim. Papa likes you. He’s quite reconciled to your marriage now. But I suppose … he resented being pushed into it.”
I protested. “He created a charitable trust so the Parsis wouldn’t object!”
Adi fiddled with the spoons. “The elders drove a hard bargain. In good times it would be no problem. But lately, things haven’t been as good for business. So many banks crashed last year … we had funds at two of them, you know. Lost quite a packet. Papa has little liquidity, now. What’s earned each week is spent in wages.”
Heavens. The paint peeling in the humid bathroom, the pile of dried palm leaves against the building. I’d imagined Burjor’s empire was vast enough to be impervious to the usual swings of fortune. I’d been mistaken.
I said, “In the States they’re calling it The ‘Panic of ’93.’ Columbia National Bank, then others. Berkeley’s Bank folded, thousands of businesses, several railroads. People starving.”
He winced. “What about Boston?”
What about you, he was asking. What about my sister?
I sent him a half smile. “We bought a bakery, remember? When she was in Chicago, your sister bought a thousand dollars’ worth of wheat. She sent it to Boston and rented a warehouse for it. Even bought three cats for the place!”
His eyebrows shot up. “Cats!”
I laughed. “Good mousers, so she said. Wouldn’t let our neighbors the Lins feed them. ‘Make them catch their dinners,’ she said! Ran the bakery every day. Long lines every morning. She kept it going, your sister, handled purchases herself.”
We had returned from Chicago that summer to find Boston in a panic.
I told Adi, “Loans were called in. Farms went bankrupt, people lost their jobs—Diana priced our loaves low, and gave away ‘stale’ batches to the ‘rear door line.’ She told them that the dough had not risen right or not enough salt. Starving folk don’t care a hoot, but she kept it up for months, handing out free bread. We still made money. It was the volume, she said.”
Adi’s pale face glowed.
Those days, Diana and Mrs. Lin sold bread in the morning, while I worked evenings after getting back from Dupree’s, hauling sacks and mixing dough with old man Lin. When Adi’s cable arrived, I grasped the chance to give Diana a holiday and booked us on the steamer to Liverpool.
But now we’d got back, Adi seemed determined not to let me help. I watched him with concern. Did he not realize that unless we solved his silversmith’s puzzle, he was facing the noose?