“Yes, sadly so. Probably whoever it is has already sold it,” she said with a dramatic sigh.
“Tell me about your daughter and her marriage,” Anita said, switching topics. “Your son-in-law’s name was Moonu?”
“What is there to tell? He had a degree. If his family had money he could have gone on to college, but still, he had a degree from the district school.”
“What sort of job did he have?”
“He worked in a timber yard, in the office. Assistant to the second bookkeeper.” Chennamma was very proud of this title and repeated it twice for Anita’s benefit.
“That is a good job,” Anita said, watching the other woman preen. “And good pay too.”
Chennamma’s hands fell still, and she glanced over her shoulder. “Let us walk over here.” She led the way to the back of the yard, where no compound wall separated the family grounds from the tangled woods going up the hill.
“Your husband has told me there was dissension in the family,” Anita said.
“My son-in-law was a good man, he was. Moonu only wanted to have his home with my daughter, but he was not happy with how my husband treated him. Panditji went to Moonu’s employer and told him to give him the paycheck, not to Moonu. Panditji is a respected man in these parts,” she said, stopping to let that sink in. “So the yard owner said yes, he would do so. So every week Panditji goes to pick up the paycheck.”
“How did Moonu feel about this?” Anita asked.
Chennamma pulled a face. “The things they said to each other!”
“What about your daughter? Does she also have a job?”
“She sweeps at the doctor’s office, and there too Panditji collects her paycheck.” She sighed. “It is right that they contribute to the household. It was to be their house, not ours, but they did not like the way Panditji went about it.”
“Did Moonu threaten to do anything?”
Chennamma slapped her hands against her cheeks. “Oy, he accused Panditji of stealing his money! And my daughter! Her father is destroying her marriage, she says.”
Anita poked her head into the small room, but Reki, Panditji’s daughter and the new widow, was snoring softly. Although the family usually slept in the large front room, Reki had been allowed to set up a private room after her husband’s death, in part to keep her from startling the household with her sudden outbursts.
“Maybe later she will wake up and talk to you.”
Anita turned around at the sound of the maidservant’s voice. The woman was holding a shallow square basket of fresh vegetables just taken from the storeroom. “You are Poota, aren’t you? Have you worked here long?”
“I came as a little girl, when I was eight or nine. My mother lives in Tinnevelly, if she is still alive.”
“Don’t you know?”
Poota shrugged. “She sends me a card every year at Onam, and I send her one too. I don’t know from year to year, but I don’t care so much anymore.”
“Do you like working here?” Anita asked. Poota shrugged again. “Where do you sleep?”
“Outside the storeroom.” She nodded to a door standing ajar, where Anita could see a rolled mat leaning against the wall and a cloth bag hanging from a peg.
Anita wandered into the storeroom and looked over the items on the shelves; the pantry was well stocked, and reminded her of her grandmother’s storeroom when she was a little girl — full of bottles with strange-colored liquids and dried roots and other things.
“What’s this?” Anita asked.
“Chennamma’s chutney,” Poota said.
“And this?”
Poota peered at it. “Some of the oil mixture Reki uses for massage.”
“And this?” Anita pulled a bottle from the very far corner of the lowest shelf.
“Poison that is saved for animals that come in the dry season.” Poota studied her. “I think it is not enough to kill a person.”
Anita found the mantrakara tending a tapioca plot behind his small house. He moved bent over from plant to plant, and Anita followed along beside him, both silent, biding their time. All of a sudden he straightened up.
“I have heard about you. Panditji is very proud to know you, but,” he said, reaching out his arm to point at her, “you will not find a murderer here. The boy died because he was guilty! I know what I am saying. Guilty! The ashes never lie!” The speech was delivered with great passion and volume, but the mantrakara’s eyes told a different story. He was about Panditji’s age, but larger and far better fed, his round belly smooth from frequent oil baths.
“Aren’t the ashes supposed to make a guilty person confess?”
“Exactly what they do!”
“But Moonu didn’t confess; he died.”
The mantrakara waved away this objection and turned back to his tapioca plants. “The police have found nothing... nothing.”
“They’re not through looking,” Anita said. “Tell me exactly what you did and where you got the ashes.”
“The ashes are from the temple, from the supply they make every morning. I purchase what I need and take them.” The magician knelt over and scooped more dirt onto a mound.
“Did people know what you had purchased the ashes for?”
“I have many customers,” he said. “I don’t keep them secret but I don’t tell others either. I don’t know what they know.”
“Okay, so you have the ashes. Then what?”
“I go to Panditji’s house and prepare a puja. I recite the mantras for making a sinner confess. I recite the mantras over the family members, each one, and then I give them the ashes. I do this again.”
“Did you have any help there, at the house?”
“What sort of help would I want?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Did Panditji give you water for mixing the ashes? Did Reki help you mix the ashes? Did Chennamma offer you plates to use?”
He shook his head. “No one is helping me. I am giving the ashes with the mantras. No one is strong enough to confess.”
“Strong enough?”
“A preta can keep someone from confessing. It is well known. There must be a preta in the house making someone do evil.”
“Panditji has never mentioned any kind of ghost or spirit troubling his family,” Anita pointed out.
“Does he know everything?”
“He would know that,” Anita said.
“You know he is ruined. No one will come to him now. There is a murder in his house, and he cannot identify how it happened or who did it. Who will trust him now?”
During supper that evening Anita kept a close eye on the women cooking and serving the meal. She had not yet had a chance to speak with Reki, and Poota had grown sullen and moody, deflecting all of Anita’s questions about dinner on the night Moonu died.
The meal was modest — plain vadai soaked in yogurt along with some vegetables. As Anita sipped her chai later, she watched the other women cleaning up. Because the house was so small, the women were constantly bumping into each other while they worked, and no one could have added a poison to one person’s meal without others noticing. Anita took her cup and saucer into the kitchen and deposited them onto the stone counter. Outside the back door she could see a figure moving toward the house. It was Reki.
Anita waited for the young woman to return from the outside latrine. “I am so sorry about your husband’s death. You were only married two years, yes?”
“Barely two years.” She dropped her arms to her sides and stared sullenly at the floor, her face a mask of distress. “Not long enough.”
“And no children?”
She shook her head.