Ellis Peters - George Felse 09 - Mourning Raga (19 page)

Anjli stepped upon solid ground, and her knees trembled under her. The ambulance men were just picking up and screening from sight all that was left of Govind Das.

There were nine of them present in Dominic’s hotel sitting-room over coffee that night. The promise made to Ashok had been no vain one, after all; he came straight from a recording session, his head still full of music, to find Anjli, in her own western clothes and with her normal poise rather enhanced than impaired, seated dutifully between Dominic and Tossa, and apparently totally engrossed in pouring coffee for their guests. The Swami Premanathanand sat cross-legged and serene at one end of the cushioned settee, with his driver Girish balancing him at the other end, a silent man with a faint smile and a grazed face, one profile beautiful in a falcon’s fashion, the other marred. Felder lay relaxed in a reclining chair, after days of tension. And the last-comers, or so it appeared, surprised everyone, except the Swami, who was not subject to surprise. For Satyavan Kumar did not come alone, but brought with him Kamala, fresh from the expensive salon of Roy and James with her glossy pyramid of black hair heady as a bush of jasmine, and her superb body swathed in a new sari of a miraculous muted shade between lilac and rose and peach. She kissed Anjli, with so serene an implication of divine right that Anjli took no offence, fluttered her fingers at Ashok, and said: ‘Darling!’ The simplest chair in the room became a throne when she sat in it. ‘I should be apologising,’ she said, smiling at Dominic, ‘I wasn’t specifically invited. But I wanted to celebrate, too. I hope you don’t mind?’

‘I am afraid,’ said the Swami, looking modestly down his nose, ‘that some of us here are not as well informed about the nature of this – celebration – as the rest Perhaps first I should explain exactly what has been happening during the last few days.’ And he did so, with such admirable brevity that he was done before anyone had breath to comment or question. ‘The only apology, perhaps, is due to you, Mr Kabir. You must forgive your young friend here, it was at my suggestion that he refrained from telling you the truth yesterday. We have not met before, but by sight and by reputation, of course, I know you well, and I assure you it was not from any doubts about you that I excluded you from our counsels. I had a respectable reason, which perhaps will appear later. The invitation to you to join us here tonight was a promise, which you see we have managed to fulfil. I hope it may be taken also as an apology in advance.’

‘No one owes me any,’ said Ashok. He looked at Anjli, and his sensitive, mobile face pondered in silence the changes in her. ‘If this thing had happened, all of us who knew of Anjli’s background were suspect. How could I be exempt? You say that Dominic heard and recognised my music… Kamala’s lullaby. Where else should you look, then, but among those of us who knew that music? And we were not so many.’

‘Not so many,’ agreed the Swami. ‘And most of them like Mr Felder here, were in Sarnath at the time of the kidnapping, as you were in Trivandrum, though we did not then know that.’

‘
I
was in Delhi,’ Kamala said helpfully. ‘Yashodhara doesn’t appear in the Deer Park scenes. None of the women do. And Subhash Ghose was here, too, and…’

‘And Govind Das,’ concluded Felder ruefully.

There was a small, flat silence. ‘We hadn’t realised,’ said Dominic then, ‘how many might be left in town. We thought the whole company had moved to Benares. Of course we thought first of the company, but filming in Sarnath seemed to put you all out of the picture. And yet I was always quite certain about Ashok’s morning raga. I knew what I’d heard. I’ll admit there were times when we didn’t know whom we could trust, or even whether we could trust anybody… even the Swami here. Even you…’ He looked up across the room at the two handsome, smiling people sitting comfortably side by side there, with an almost domestic ease and felicity. ‘Last night, Mr Kumar, after you left, Tossa and I were walking round by Claridge’s. We saw you leaving together by taxi…’

Ashok’s eyebrows had soared into his hair. ‘
Kumar
?’ he said half-aloud, astonished and mystified.

Kamala laughed gently. ‘Yes, I see that we made difficulties for you. After all these years we still prefer to dine together when we can. Krishan is a serious character actor, I am, let’s face it, a fashionable star. Never in our whole married life have we been able to play together in the same film. We are both contrasuggestible. The whole pressure of our work drives us apart. That is why we spend all the time left to us together.’

‘Krishan?’ Dominic said, confounded.

‘
Married
life?’ repeated Felder, slowly sitting upright in his chair. ‘I didn’t even know you
were
married…’

‘No, darling, of course you didn’t. We have a theory. The least publicised marriages are the most durable ones, and we happen to like being married to each other. And after all, you’ve known me only a little while, and only as one of a company at work.’

‘But to
Kumar
here…?’

‘Oh, no darling, not
Kumar
. How confused you are, I’m so sorry I’m not making myself clear. No, my husband is Krishan Malenkar, and if I may say so, a very good actor indeed. If you should ever be casting a film with an Indian business background, the Swami tells me he made a most appealing, as well as convincing tycoon.’

‘But if
he’s
not Kumar,’ persisted Felder feverishly, ‘then
who is
?’

Anjli looked all round the ring of astonished faces, and suddenly rose from her place, unable any longer to subdue the blaze of joy and achievement that shone out of her. She crossed the room to where Girish sat, and put a hand possessively on his shoulder, and he smiled and drew her down beside him.

‘
This
is my father,’ she said proudly, as if she found it incomprehensible that they could ever have been in doubt.

‘I knew him as soon as I saw him driving after us. I knew he would come for me.’

All eyes had turned upon the Swami. ‘But
why
?’ demanded Felder on behalf of them all. ‘Why was it necessary to conceal the fact that her father was right here with you? I don’t understand what sense it makes.’

‘Oh, come!’ protested the Swami mildly. ‘You do yourself less than justice, Mr Felder, I’m sure. It cannot be so difficult to see a good reason for suppressing Satyavan’s identity, since circumstances made it possible. I did not then know which of you, if any, could be trusted. Satyavan, since he left home, has indeed been a law unto himself, and like everyone else, I have seldom known for long where he could be found; but at various times he has been working in several of the Mission’s projects, and from time to time I have been in touch with him. At the time of his mother’s death I had no idea where to find him, and he did not read the papers regularly, and only learned of her death too late to be present at her funeral rites. As soon as he did hear, he came. To me! We drove together to his house, it was his intention to begin at once to set his affairs in order. You,’ he said, turning his mild, bright eyes upon Dominic and Tossa, ‘know what we heard and saw when we came to Rabindar Nagar. Should I then have produced him and named him to you, whom we did not know, you, who had been in charge of the child and might be involved in her abduction? No! It was the strength of Satyavan’s position that he had not been seen in Rabindar Nagar for more than a year, that many of his neighbours were new, that he returned now straight from the field, not a Delhi businessman but weather-beaten and dressed for work, and driving the Mission car… He wished to remain in the background, unknown and free to move as he would, for it was
his
daughter who was at risk. From that moment, therefore, we watched you in everything you did, and equally all those who had contact with you. It seemed that any demands for ransom must come through you, and so it turned out. And after the first payment failed to produce Anjli, I judged it necessary to provide another father, a convincing father of the right type, and to have him emerge into the limelight and take charge.’

‘But why?’ insisted Felder. ‘I still don’t see the purpose of it.’

‘Oh, a very specific purpose. His job was to insist on seeing Anjli alive before more money was paid. For, you see, until then we had no means whatever of being sure that she had not been killed. Yes, yes, Mr Felder, you were horrified at that suggestion, I know, nevertheless it is common form in these cases. But when my good friend Malenkar played his scene, insisted on seeing with his own eyes – and incidentally with ours, too! – that she still lived,
and when there was no demur
, then we had a certain degree of security. A fairly substantial degree, in fact. Enough to make plans. For Satyavan, apparently a servant, and therefore virtually invisible, was free to observe and to act. On his behalf no one ever made any bargains. These are my reasons for acting as I did. Was it well done?’

‘
Yes
!’ said Dominic and Tossa together fervently. ‘
Very
well done!’

‘And that is why I could not let Mr Kabir come upstairs and join us here last night. I cannot say whether he actually knows Satyavan by sight, though I thought it a possibility. But I
did
know that he is very well acquainted with Malenkar, and would most probably have given the show away on the spot.’

‘
To which one of us
?’ Dominic asked very gently.

The Swami’s mild eyes sharpened upon him almost alarmingly, if there had not been in the brief, brilliant glance a suggestion of distinct approval.

‘Ah, I did not then know of the activities of Govind Das. I was still acting on the assumption that the director of the affair might be any one of you. It seems now that the whole thing was planned and carried out by this one man.’

‘A bad business,’ said Felder soberly.

‘As you say, a bad business. It turned out so for him.’

‘Small part actors don’t make much money. Probably here they don’t get too many parts, either. Or anywhere, for that matter, these days. I suppose seeing temptation trailed in front of his nose like that was too much for him – the daughter of a milllionaire and a film star, and only two students new to India taking care of her. It must have looked easy! Well, thank goodness it’s over! The poor wretch who planned and did it is dead. He’s paid. That’s the end of it.’

A long, communicated sigh went round the room, and subsided into a deep and thoughtful silence.

‘Except,’ said Anjli suddenly, erect and sombre by her father’s side, ‘
if
he did it all alone, why did Shantik say
they’d told him
not to hurt me? That’s what she said. Tomorrow you can ask her.’

A curious flutter of uneasiness stirred the air.

‘And
if
he did it all alone,’ Dominic said slowly, ‘then he must be a genius, to be able to come up with that scheme about lunch at Sawyers’ and a taxi to the sweet shop opposite, the very minute he was faced with having to arrange a way of letting us see Anjli. Now if he’d already been primed by somebody who
knew
what was going to happen…’

‘And what,’ wondered Tossa, ‘if he
did
do it all alone, what has he done with the money from the first payment we made at the Birla temple? Because you know what the police said – they haven’t found a trace of it at his house or in his sister-in-law’s quarters at the office.’

‘And if it wasn’t he who took the money from the briefcase,’ supplemented the Swami, warming to the theme, ‘then who was it? And where is it now? It would be so much more satisfactory, would it not, to recover it? Even film stars who
do
make a great deal of money should not be made the victims of extortion.’

‘They certainly shouldn’t,’ agreed Felder warmly. ‘I’ve still got to justify that to Dorrie, but at least she still has a daughter, thank God. It does seem a pity, but it hardly looks as if we’ll ever see that money again.’

‘Oh, do not lose heart,’ the Swami encouraged him benignly. ‘Perhaps, after all, there is still hope that the police may discover it somewhere.’

‘Well, if they do, presumably there may be some hope of deducing how it got there. Until then I’m afraid we haven’t much chance.’

And indeed it seemed that it was over, and that there was no longer anything to hold them all here together; yet no one made any move to go. It was almost as if they were waiting for something to happen which would release them and let them fly apart again into their proper orbits, Dominic and Tossa, tired, relieved and infinitely grateful, back to England, the Swami to the minute office from which he pulled so many valiant and unexpected strings in the life of unprivileged India, Krishan Malenkar and his Kamala to their well-guarded private life, Anjli wherever her new father led her, deeper and deeper into the complex soul of this sub-continent, Ashok back to the cosmic solitude where the great artists create their own companions, like self-generating gods; and Felder…

Someone rapped at the door, briskly, quietly and with absolute authority.

‘Come in! ’ called Dominic.

Inspector Kulbir Singh came in with aplomb. His black beard was tucked snugly into its retaining net, his moustache was immaculately waxed at the ends, which turned up in military fashion to touch his bold cheek-bones. In his hands – gloved hands – he held a large, fat bank envelope, linen-grained, biscuit-coloured. Every eye in the room fastened on it, and for an instant everyone held his breath.

‘Ladies… Swami… gentlemen, forgive this intrusion. There is a small matter of identification with which you can help me, if you will.’ He came forward with assurance, and laid the envelope upon the coffee table, drawing out delicately wad after wad of notes. ‘No, no, please do not touch. There is the question of finger prints. I would ask you only to look at this packet… you, Mr Felder, Mr Felse and Miss Barber. The total amount, you may take my word, is two hundred thousand rupees, as you see in notes of various values. It is contained in an envelope of the State Bank of India, issued at the branch here in Parliament Street. Their stamp bears last Saturday’s date. I must ask you if you can identify this package.’

They stood staring all three, alike stricken into silence. Dominic was the first to clear his throat. ‘It looks very like the money Mr Felder drew from the bank, in my presence, on Saturday morning. The amount is right.’