Side Trip to Kathmandu (A Sidney Marsh Murder Mystery Book 3) (9 page)

“I
t’s so quiet here,” murmured Brooke, staring up at the magnificent pink and deep red stone buildings of Emperor Akbar’s palace at Fatehpur Sikri, “I can hear the wind.”

She was right. There was a profound silence in the place. I realized that we had become so attuned to the bustle of the cities crowded with people, animals, and vehicles that the splendid isolation of this solitary ancient site was almost a shock to the senses.

Mohit, again acting as historian and guide, began the history of Emperor Akbar, builder of Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri and grandfather of
Shah Jahān
. He gathered us round a huge stone tethering ring in the courtyard near the emperor’s pavilion. There Akbar was said to have kept a chained elephant whose sole purpose was to crush capital criminals to death.

“In 1568,” Mohit said in his sing-song voice, “Akbar came to this place called Sikri. He was twenty-six years old and still without an heir. Here he met a Sufi mystic named Salim who promised him three sons. The following year a son was born. So Akbar, in his joy, built this beautiful palace and moved his entire capital here, calling it Fatehpur Sikri, meaning City of Victory. But it remained his capital for only thirteen years before being completely abandoned.”

“But why,” said Adam, waving his arm in a wide gesture toward the five-tiered wind towers, “was all this deserted? It is magnificent.”

“There was no water,” Mohit replied. “The lake that was built was insufficient. Water had to be brought from afar, and after a time the effort became too much. So here it stands, abandoned. Beautiful, yes, but home only to the wind.”

“Amazing,” Lucy said. Shading her camera from the sun, she snapped shot after shot of the stunning palace.

At the end of the lecture we were given a departure time and then released to stroll at will through the harem and the various pavilions and palaces. The stone walls and pillars were elaborately carved in both the Hindu and Islamic manner. We were lucky in that we had the place entirely to ourselves.

I had envisioned a lovely morning, strolling through the palace with Adam and continuing the warm conversation that had begun in the car, but he was reclaimed upon arrival by Jasmine.

She entwined her jeweled arm in his and tugged him toward the harem. I thought sourly that it was not surprising that the harem was always the building that interested her most in these ancient palace complexes.

I soon forgot about both of them, however, as I walked alone from the Astrologer’s Pavilion to the Treasurer’s Pavilion, immersed in the stark beauty before me.

I wandered, lost in thought, taking tons of pictures even while imagining what it must have been like when Akbar was in residence. My imagination was really working overtime as I pictured the emperor sitting on silken cushions, counting all his wealth with his treasurer. I even thought I caught a glimpse of a man slipping from column to column in the shadows, where legend says Akbar played hide-and-seek with his favorite wives.

The silence really was uncanny. Mohit’s resonant voice, the only one I could hear, soon faded away as I wandered deeper into the forest of stone columns, gazing upward in awe at the carvings of flowers, birds, lions, and elephants—mostly their heads and trunks. They were impressive even now, six centuries after they’d been carved.

I totally lost track of time. It was as if I had stepped back a few centuries. Sheltered from the blazing sun by the huge stone pavilions, lulled into imagination by the wind, I strolled deep into the sandstone complex. So deep, in fact, that it suddenly occurred to me that finding my way back to the cars was not going to be easy. I looked at my watch, realizing that it was almost departure time. There was no signage to direct me and I was not sure of the way out.

I decided to walk back the way I had come in hope of finding some of the others or an exit sign. I couldn’t hear any voices.

I had just turned a corner for the second time, aware that I was seriously lost, when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a big man leaping toward me from the shadowed archway of columns.

“Gotcha!” Jay shouted, pinning my arms. “Surprise!”

My heart almost stopped. Catching my breath, I whirled to scream at him for scaring me, but then I could see that was what he wanted so I didn’t. He released my arms and started laughing his red head off. I was furious, and my heart was still beating way too fast.

“Oh come on, Sidney, lighten up. I was just having a little fun with you.”

I didn’t say a word, just looked at him and turned to stomp toward the exit, which had been nearby all along. I wasn’t speaking to the big galoot. I was headed for the car.

“Aw, come on, Sid. Didn’t you have fun playing hide-and-seek as a little kid way down in Dixie?” he called after me.

No answer. I wasn’t speaking to him, just marching to the gate.

Catching up with me, he tried again, this time with a pious tone in his voice. “You should thank me, you know, for making you aware of how dangerous it can be for a woman to wander alone in such a deserted place, especially in a strange country.”

That did it.

“Thank you?” I screamed, “Thank you for scaring the daylights out of me like some big kid? Thank you? Seriously?”

“Yes. And that’s just what you get, Sidney, for wandering off like that. I’m glad I scared you. Maybe it will make you think. What if it hadn’t been me? What if someone else besides me had grabbed you and just dragged you off somewhere? What then? Better be a little more careful, Missy, unless you want to end up on a milk carton. If they even do that kind of thing here.”

We had almost reached the cars. I marched on in stony silence and now Jay was huffy too, puffed up with self-righteousness.

The others were already seated inside the vehicles, with the engines, and more importantly, the air conditioners running. No one said anything as we climbed in and closed the doors. I was glad Jay was in the front seat with me behind him. Adam gave us both a searching look but said nothing as the cars rolled away.

#

I apologized to Jay at the airport while we waited for the short flight to Varanasi.

On the long car ride from Fatehpur Sikri to the airport, Jay engaged Adam in conversations about Indian politics and economics, pointedly excluding me. Jay never made eye contact. I didn’t either.

As the miles rolled by, I just looked out the window at the passing scene, tuning them both out. Finally I cooled down and realized that Jay had been right in his warning to me, even though his methods were childish and over the top. But what was Jay if not playful? His spirit of fun is one of the things I love about him. I owed him an apology for overreacting.

I waited for a chance to speak with him privately at the airport and found him seated in a Wi-Fi area tapping away on his laptop. He looked grim.

“Bad news from Silverstein?” I said, trying to keep my tone as light as possible.

He looked up at me and said, “Oh, hi, Sidney.”

“Look, Jay, I’m sorry. You were in the right, not me. I’ve thought it over and I realize and appreciate what you were trying to do. I wasn’t thinking. I was wrong to yell at you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, babe,” he said, with a little half smile. “Guess I was wrong, too, scaring you like that. Peace?”

“Peace.”

He frowned down at his screen, patting the seat next to him.

I sat beside him.

“Do we have a problem?” I asked.

“Yeah. You could say that,” he said, turning the screen toward me so I could read what Silverstein had written. “Silverstein says forget about Sharma or trying to be tour directors and just keep Brooke happy, but that’s not the trouble. The trouble is that apparently Felix didn’t die of a heart attack after all. He was poisoned.”

“What? Poisoned!”

“Yes. The cousin kept demanding an autopsy, so they finally did one. He died of poisoning. Some Indian poison,
cerbera odollam
, a toxic dose. Comes from the seeds of the othalanga tree. It stopped his heart.”

“Oh, Jay, no!”

“Unfortunately, it’s true. The toxicology report was conclusive. It took them a while to figure it out because it’s hard to detect if you’re not looking for it. But apparently quite a lot of people die of it in this country, often by their own hand. They call it ‘the suicide tree.’ The good news here, if there is any, is that Silverstein for once is not blaming us for stuff beyond our control. He just wants us to carry on as planned and keep Brooke happy and safe.”

“Are you going to tell her about Felix?”

“No. Silverstein ordered me not to tell her but said we could talk it over with her later, after she gets the news. Sharma is telling her after his conference this morning with the authorities. That’s the real reason he didn’t go with us today. The police informed him about Felix and he had to go to the police station. Naturally, he reported to Silverstein without mentioning a word of it to us. He lied to us about where he was going. Remember he said he had ‘family business’ to attend to? Family business, my ass! He spoke with the police and Silverstein this morning and he is meeting us here at the airport for the flight to Khajuraho.”

“That slick little weasel.”

“Yes. I don’t trust him for a minute.”

“I don’t either, but for once I have to say I’m glad he’s running point instead of us, aren’t you?”

“Yep. I am,” he said, closing the laptop. “Let’s go, Sidney, they’re calling our flight.”

#

Boarding at the airport was generally chaotic. Flights appeared oversold by a good margin. The boarding process seemed to be that all ticketholders waited in a holding area until the flight was called. Then, at the announcement, the gates were opened and there was a frantic dash for the plane. Seat assignments were a joke. People just grabbed the first seat they found, and when all were filled the door was shut and the plane taxied away, leaving the unlucky ones to wait for the next one.

We weren’t part of the mad scramble because Sharma had showed up at the last minute and made a visit to the little room behind the airline counter with his black bag. The smiling, satisfied gate agent then ushered us personally to our seats on our small plane, ahead of the general melee. This was certainly not the normal experience, but with Brooke’s money, anything was possible.

Sharma gave no explanations about his activities in the morning while we were on tour. He offered no words explaining his abrupt absence or informing us about poor Felix.

It didn’t matter. Answers to some of those questions would be forthcoming. I had big plans to have prayer with Mr. Sharma at the first opportunity, as we say down South.

Before too long, Jay and I were seated aisle-across on a small, dingy airplane bound for Khajuraho. Jay’s seat was broken and wouldn’t remain fully upright. The seedy, smelly old aircraft certainly didn’t meet the standard of Sharma’s promised “luxury tour.” I wondered what Brooke was thinking.

After takeoff, a flight attendant in a worn uniform came down the aisle pushing a tiny cart laden with small foil-wrapped lunch trays. She offered a choice of entrée, so I asked for the veg meal and Jay chose the beef.

He stripped off the foil, took a look at his food, and showed it to me,

“ ‘Look, madam, cow sits.’ ”

Then he tried to steal my lunch.

I wasn’t swapping meals, but I did share mine with him. My food was pretty bad too, but it sure looked a lot better than his. I didn’t think my meal would kill us, but from the smell of it, there was a good chance that his meal might.

“Speaking of food,” Jay announced, “I decided this morning that I can stop being so careful about my meals. I haven’t felt sick at all and I’m tired of being so cautious. It’s boring. I had the whole buffet at breakfast and washed it down with a big glass of iced water and I feel just fine. I think I can tell just by looking if something is bad or not. From now on, I’m eating and drinking whatever I want. I think all the precautions we’ve been taking are unnecessary.”

Following longtime travel habits, we had both so far stuck to our normal rules for meals where food safety may be a concern. That is, we didn’t eat anything that wasn’t cooked or peeled, and we drank only bottled water, bottled soft drinks, coffee, wine, and beer. No ice.

We are also pretty careful about buffets, where food might sit out unrefrigerated for too long or be contaminated by improper handling or insects. We never eat street food.

“Are you sure about that, Jay? You really think that’s a good idea?”

“Yep. I think the danger of Delhi-belly is over. We both know that’s not what killed Felix, right? And if the meal we just ate doesn’t make us sick, nothing will.”

“Do as you wish, Jay, but I’m not chancing it. I am sticking with the rules.”

“Somehow I thought you would, sweetie. Always want to play it safe, don’t you? What about that guy on television who goes all over the world eating weird stuff? He makes it okay.”

“Only on camera. He’s probably sick as a dog later.”

“Well, I’m going to eat what I want from now on. Truly experience an adventure in the native cuisine. You know I’m a real gourmet.”

“Whatever you say, Jay. Whatever.”