Mourning Raga gfaf-9 Read online

  ‘Miss Kumar? No, I have not seen her this morning, I am sorry.’ The clerk was a dapper young man, friendly and willing to please. He looked from one anxious face to the other, and grasped that this was serious; and it was in pure kindness of heart that he felt impelled to add something more, even if it was of no practical help. ‘I have seen nothing of her since she came in with you yesterday evening. To be sure, I remember there was a note delivered here for her later…’

  ‘Note?’ said Dominic, pricking up his ears. He looked at Tossa, and she shook her head; not a word had been said about any note. ‘Did she get it?’

  ‘Of course, sir, I sent it up to her as soon as it came, by the room-boy.’

  ‘You don’t know who it was from? Who brought it?’ Certainly not the postman, at that hour.

  ‘No, sir, I cannot say from whom it came. It was a common peon who brought it, some shop porter, perhaps. Though I do recall that the note was not in an envelope, but just a sheet of paper folded together – a little soiled, even…’

  It did not sound at all like the immaculate Vasudev. And who else was there in Delhi to be sending notes to Anjli? The film unit was away in Benares, and no one else knew her.

  ‘About what time was this?’

  ‘I cannot say precisely, sir, but a little after nine, probably.’

  Anjli had announced her intention of going for her bath at about that hour. And only a few minutes later, that floating wisp of melody had drifted in at the window that overlooked the courtyard… No, he was imagining connections where there were none. Tossa was right, the ragas were there for everyone to use and enjoy. It was placing too much reliance on his unpractised ear to insist that what he had heard was not merely Raga Aheer Bhairab, but Ashok’s unique folksong variation of it, and no other.

  So they were back to the necessity of beginning the hunt for Anjli somewhere; and the obvious place was Purnima’s house. Where, of course, they told each other bracingly in the taxi, Anjli would certainly be.

  ‘Note?’ Vasudev’s thin black moustache quivered with consternation. ‘No, indeed I assure you I sent my little cousin no note. I would not dream of addressing her except through you, when you have been placed in charge of her by her mother. I have been considering, indeed – I intended to telephone you today and ask you to call… Some proper provision must be made, of course. But I did not… This is terrible! You do not think that someone has lured her away…? But who knew of her presence here? Your friends of the film unit, you tell me, are in Benares. Otherwise who could know you – and Anjli – here in Delhi, and know where to find you?’

  ‘We’ve been in contact with a lot of people in the town, of course,’ admitted Tossa, ‘but only casually, the sort of tourist contact one has with shops, and restaurants, and guides… and what could be more anonymous? The only place where we’re known, so to speak, apart from here and the hotel, is the house in Rabindar Nagar – your cousin Satyavan’s house…’

  ‘Of course! ’ Dominic snapped his fingers joyfully. ‘Why didn’t I think of it! Kishan Singh! A slightly grubby little note brought by a paid messenger… It could be! Kishan Singh may have had some news of Anjli’s father. Perhaps he’s home!’

  Vasudev looked first dubious, and then hopeful; and after a few seconds of thought, both excited and resolute. He came out of his western chair in a nervous leap. ‘Come, we shall take the car and I will drive you over there to Rabindar Nagar. We must see if this is the case. Indeed, one hopes! That would resolve all our problems most fortunately.’

  He ran to the rear door of the palatial hall, and clapped his hands, and in a few moments they heard him issuing clipped, high-pitched orders. Presently the car rolled majestically round on to the rosy gravel, with a magnificently turbaned Sikh at the wheel. A glossy new Mercedes in the most conservative of dark greys, and its chauffeur’s pride and joy, that was clear by the condescending forbearance with which he opened the door to allow them to enter its sacred confines. But that morning he was not to be allowed to drive it; Vasudev did that himself, and did it with a ferocity and fire they had not expected from him. Their taxi driver, on the first occasion, had taken half as long again to get them to Rabindar Nagar.

  At the first turning into the new suburb from the main road Vasudev braked, hesitating. ‘It is long since I was here, I have forgotten. Is it this turn?’

  ‘The second one. N block, it’s only a couple of hundred yards farther on. Yes, here.’

  At the half-finished houses the bold, gypsyish, stately women of Orissa walked the scaffolding with shallow baskets of bricks on their heads, and made a highly-coloured frieze against the pale blue sky, their fluted skirts swaying as though to music. At sight of the opulent car the half-naked children padded barefoot across the open from their low, dark tents, running beside it with pinkish-brown palms upturned and small, husky voices grating their endless complaint against possessing nothing among so many and such solid possessions. There was no obsequious tone in this begging, it accused, demanded and mocked, expecting nothing, and ready to throw stones if nothing was given. But this time the plump lady from next door did not chase them away. She was there, she and a dozen others, clustered round the open iron gate of N 305, all shrilling and shrugging in excited Hindi, a soprano descant to a louder, angrier, more violent clamour of male voices eddying from within the compound. No one had time now for errant children; the centre of all attention was there within the wall, out of sight. And even the Orissan infants, having come to beg, sensed that there was more to be had here than new pice, and winding the excitement, wormed their way in under elbows, between legs, through the folds of saris, to see whatever was there to be seen.

  ‘Oh, God, no!’ prayed Tossa silently in the back seat, tugging at the handle of the door. Little girls vanished, little girls reappeared, horribly changed. Everybody knew it happened. But not here! With all its violence and despair and hunger, somehow India had felt morally clean and safe to her, she would have walked through Old Delhi at night, alone, and never felt a qualm, something she couldn’t have said for Paddington. Yet unmistakably this had the look of a crowd round the police van, the ambulance, the sorry panoply of murder or rape.

  They clambered out of the car, clumsy with haste.

  ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! ’ Vasudev keened, his voice soaring with agitation. ‘Something has happened! Something is wrong here! Miss Barber, you should please stay in the car…’

  But she was already ahead of them, boring into the small butterfly crowd about the gate, and thrusting her way through without ceremony. They followed her perforce, clinging to her arm, urging her to go back. Tossa hardly noticed. It was bad enough for them, but it was she who had taken on the job, so lightly so selfishly, coveting India and hardly thinking, at first, about the child who was being posted about the world like a parcel…

  She extricated herself frantically from the gold-embroidered end of a lilac and white sari, and fell out into the open space of the compound, and Dominic flung his arm round her and held her upright. The door of Satyavan’s house stood wide open, and on the white paving before it Kishan Singh, his guileless eyes round and golden with fright, sobbed and protested and argued in loud Hindi, alternately buffeted and shaken between two vociferous Punjabis in khaki shorts and tunics. Another man in khaki, obviously their superior, stood straddle-legged before the trio, barking abrupt questions at the terrified boy, and swinging a short rattan cane of office in one hand. He was a handsome turbaned Sikh, his beard cradled in a fine black net, his moustache waxed fiercely erect at the ends. Whatever had happened, the Delhi police were in possession here.

  Kishan Singh, turning his bullet head wildly from one persecutor to the other, caught a fleeting glimpse of the new arrivals, and uttered a shrill cry of relief and joy. Crises in India are chaotic, voluble and exceedingly noisy, and he had been adding his share to this one, but only out of panic. With someone to speak for him, he regained his sturdy mountain calm.

  ‘Sahib, memsahib, please, ther
e is very bad thing happened. You tell these men, I am honest, I have done nothing wrong… Why should I call police here, if I did this thing?’

  Dominic looked squarely at the Sikh officer, who was plainly the man to be reckoned with here. ‘Kishan Singh is the caretaker of this house, and has been a good servant to Shrimati Purnima Kumar and to her son. If Shrimati Purnima were still alive, I know she would speak for her boy, and I feel sure Mr Kumar here, her nephew, will tell you the same. I don’t know what has happened here, but I know that Kishan Singh is to be trusted.’ Did he really know that, after one short encounter? Yes, he did, and he wasn’t going to apologise for the brevity of the acquaintance to this man or to anyone. With some people, you know where you stand, with some you don’t. Kishan Singh belonged among the former group. There is an innocence which is absolute, and there’s no mistaking it when you do meet it.

  ‘I understand,’ said the Sikh officer, eyeing them narrowly, ‘that this boy is the only resident here. Is that the case?’ His English was all the better because his voice was a sombre bass-baritone.

  ‘Yes, I understand that is true. Apart from the old man who lives in the compound here, as a kind of pensioner of the family.’

  ‘Ah… yes,’ said the police officer gently. ‘That is the point. We are, unfortunately, debarred from referring to this elderly gentleman as a witness.’

  ‘I know he is blind. You mean there has been a crime on these premises?’

  ‘A very serious crime.’ He made a brief gesture with the cane in his hand, and deflected all attention into the distant corner of the compound, partially cut off from view by the jut of the house wall. Tossa wanted to close her eyes, but did not; what right had she to refrain from seeing what was there to be seen? The poor little girl, shuttlecock to this marital pair who didn’t care a toss about her, and now fallen victim to some incomprehensible perversion that was an offence against India as well as against youth and girlhood…

  ‘Come, you should look more closely,’ said the Sikh, and led the way, turning once to say with authority: ‘The lady must stay here.’

  The lady stayed; she could not very well do anything else. But her eyes, which had excellent vision, followed them remorselessly across the sparkling white paving, across the beaten, rust-coloured earth, under the lightly-dancing clothes-line, to the shed and the lean-to roof in the corner, where Anjli…

  No! There was no honeyed rose of Anjli’s skin there, and no midnight-black of her hair, and no silvery angora pink of her best jersey suit. There were two policemen and one dried-up little medical civilian sitting on their heels around something on the ground; and when the Sikh brought his accidental witnesses over to view the find, these three rose and drew apart, leaving the focus of all attention full in view.

  He could not have been found there, any chance passerby in the side street might have looked over the wall and seen him; they must have brought him out into the light after measuring and recording his position on discovery, somewhere there in the corner shed, fast hidden from sight.

  The dull brown blanket was gone. Only a thin, skinny little shape, hardly larger than a monkey, lay contorted on the darker brown earth of Satyavan’s yard, bony arms curled together as if holding a secret, bony legs drawn up to his chin, streaky grey hair spread abroad like scattered ash. There was so little blood in him that his face was scarcely congested at all; but there were swollen bruises on the long, skinny, misshapen throat to show that he had died by strangulation.

  The eyes were open; blank, rounded and white as pearls.

  Arjun Baba, that very, very old man, had quitted the world in the night, and left no message behind him.

  Kishan Singh padded across the yard at the policeman’s heels, protesting: ‘I did not touch the old man, I swear it. Sahib, why should I touch him? All this year I have given him food, and brought him his pan, and been as his servant, as my mistress told me. Always when I rose in the morning he was sitting by his brazier… Today he was not there. I called him, and he did not answer, and therefore I looked within… Sahib, he was lying there in the dark, as you see him, so he was. I saw that he was dead… Also I saw how he had died, and therefore I ran for the police. Should I do that if I had killed him?’

  ‘It would be the best way of appearing blameless,’ said the Sikh officer drily, ‘if you had the wit.’

  ‘But why should I wish to harm him, I? What gain for me? You think such a person had money to be stolen?’

  ‘You may have grudged the effort of feeding him. Perhaps he was in your way. It would be easy to make away with some of the furnishings of this house, without a witness always in the compound…’

  ‘The old man was blind…’

  ‘But very quick of hearing,’ called the plump lady from next door, bright with excitement at the gate; and all the neighbours joined in in shrill Hindi, shouting one another down. ‘Everything he heard! I had only to set foot on my roof, and he would call up to me. He knew by my walk when I had my washing basket on my arm.’

  ‘This boy has been always a very trustworthy servant,’ Vasudev urged in agitation. ‘I cannot believe he would hurt the old man.’

  ‘You do not know what he might do, being master here as well as servant. Young people have no time now to care for the old… Arjun Baba was a trouble to him, that is how it was! Who else was here to do this thing, tell us that? In the night we are not minding our neighbours’ business here, we are good people. Very easy to make away with the old man in the night, and then find him – oh, yes, all innocently! – in the morning and run to the police.’

  Other voices rose as vociferously, arguing against her. The two policemen, affronted by the steady surge of curious people across the threshold into the front garden, began to push them back outside the gate, were shrilled at indignantly in consequence, and shouted back no less angrily. The noise soared into a crescendo that was like physical pain. And all the while Dominic and Tossa gazed at the shrunken, indifferent corpse of Arjun Baba, old age torn and savaged and discarded where they had dreaded to see Anjli’s youth and grace. It is a terrible thing to feel only relief when you are brought face to face with a murdered man. They felt themselves, in some obscure way, responsible, if not for his death, yet for the absence of all mourning; if the world had not owed him a living, yet surely it owed him at least justice and regret now that he was dead.

  ‘If you did not do it, then who did? Who else would want to kill such an old man? Who were Arjun Baba’s enemies?’

  ‘He had no enemies… No friends now except me… and no enemies… I do not know who would do such a thing. But I did not… I did not…’

  In the fine drift of dust along the lee of the old man’s hut a tiny gleam of whiteness showed. Dominic stepped carefully past the stringy brown feet, and stooped to pick up the small alien thing no one else had yet noticed. It lay coiled in his palm light as a feather, seven inches or so of fine green cord stringing a bracelet of white jasmine buds, threaded pointing alternately this way and that. After sixteen hours they were a little soiled and faded, one or two torn away from their places, but they were still fragrant. He saw that the green cord was not untied, but broken; and silk is very strong.

  Anjli had been here!

  He began to see, vaguely, the shape of disturbing things. Anjli had been here, and the flowers she had worn had been ripped from her wrist with some violence, perhaps in a struggle. And the old man, the only one remaining who had been here when Satyavan vanished in the night, was dead. Anjli had given him a token, and coaxed him to tell her whatever he knew. And last night Anjli had received a grubby note brought by a common messenger, a note which had sent her out secretly before dawn. To this place. For so the jasmine flowers said clearly.

  He turned to the Sikh police officer, shouting to make himself heard. ‘Have your men examined all Arjun Baba’s belongings? May I know what you found?’

  ‘Belongings? Sahib, such a man has nothing… a brazier, a headcloth, a loincloth, a blanket…’
/>   ‘But you see he hasn’t got a blanket! And it was a cold night!’

  It was true. The policeman cast one swift glance into the hut, and frowned, and looked again at Dominic, who was becoming interesting. With more respect he enumerated one by one the few poor items of Arjun Baba’s housekeeping.

  ‘Nothing more? Not even a tiny thing like a gold coin?’

  A shrug and an indulgent smile. ‘Where should such a man get gold?’

  Had the token been sent back, then, as bait to bring Anjli? And if so, by whom? By Arjun Baba in good faith? Or by his killer? A missing gold dollar to lure her to the meeting in the dark, a missing blanket to muffle her cries and smother her struggles…

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, ‘where he got gold. From a young girl who came here with us a few days ago, and gave him the dollar she wears on a chain for luck. We came here looking for her, and I really think we’d better tell you the whole story, because it looks as if she has been here in the night, and whoever killed Arjun Baba has also taken Anjli away. Can’t we go into the house, where it will be quieter? This may take some time.’

  It would have taken less time than it did if someone could have restrained Vasudev’s slightly hysterical commentary of pious horror and masochistic self-reproach. Wasn’t he, perhaps, protesting even a shade too much? Tossa’s thumbs were pricking painfully before the whole story was told. True, Vasudev had willingly brought them here, and in a hurry, too, but might not that be part of a carefully-laid plan? The anxious relative, conscious-stricken over his own shortcomings towards his young cousin… who was going to look there for a murderer and kidnapper? There was a lot of Kumar money, and this dutiful managing director of all that wealth had got into the habit of thinking in millions by now. Who could wonder if…? Some people would even have difficulty in blaming him!