Things like your ordering his execution, Cunningham thought sourly. “Not in the way you mean,” he said, thinking back over the conversation. “He seemed more curious than anything else, and there weren’t any threats. But he was a bit of an Indian lover back in 1915; I remember how impressed he was by Bhattacharyya and Jatin Mukherjee. He always did his job, though—I have to give him that.” He shrugged. “People do change.”
Fitzwilliam shook his head. “Rarely in my experience. Could he stick his oar in if he wanted to?”
“He’d have to find them first.”
The colonel grunted, apparently in agreement.
“There’s no way he could know about Sayid Hassan’s house,” Morley added. “That business happened after he went back to England.”
“Are we going to tell the Good Indian team?” Cunningham asked Fitzwilliam.
“Good Lord, no. What would be the point?” The colonel sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ll be glad when this business is over.”
Snapshots
Having set the search underway, McColl and Caitlin spent almost all of the following forty-eight hours together in their room. They reminisced and read, ate leisurely meals, and took naps in the fearsome heat, and tried not to let their fears for the next few days drown out everything else.
It was midway through the second morning when a rap on their door announced the head servant, bearing a sheet of the consulting detective’s personal stationery. Mirza’s message was brief and to the point: “Success. Rendezvous, Central Post Office, Noon.” McColl passed it to Caitlin, who read it and took a deep breath. He could only guess how hard this was going to be for her.
“I don’t suppose it would be a good idea for me to come,” she said.
“No, it wouldn’t,” he agreed, looking at his watch. He had plenty of time to get into costume and walk to the post office.
She came across to him, and he thought she was going to give him an argument, but she simply held him close for a minute or so. “I suppose you want me to wind your turban?” she said playfully, releasing him.
“If you would be so kind.”
An hour and a half or so later he was climbing aboard Mirza’s tonga.
“An excellent disguise,” the detective said, studying McColl’s outfit with interest. Mirza was also dressed in Indian clothes—a simple white shirt and dhoti.
“You have found them?” McColl asked.
“Of course. Did I not announce ‘success’ in my message? We are going there now.”
“How far is it?”
“A mile? Perhaps a little more. They are staying in the home of one Sayid Hassan. He is not there, but it was arranged with him before he went away. No one seems to know where he has gone, but”—Mirza looked at McColl—“perhaps he is putting distance between himself and something particularly unsavory?”
“I don’t know,” McColl said, somewhat disingenuously.
The tonga rattled south down Faiz Bazaar, driven by a young boy whom McColl thought he recognized from the “Ballimaran Road Irregulars.” Did Mirza picture himself in a London hansom hurrying toward some leafy suburban scene of derring-do? McColl hadn’t read a Holmes story since before the war, but he remembered that several had Indian roots. Monkeys and mutiny treasure, or something along those lines.
After about five minutes, the Delhi Gate loomed ahead, but rather than pass through it, the tonga took a sharp turn to the right, heading west along the inside of the still-impressive city wall. A few minutes later the boy pulled the pony to a halt beside a semiderelict flight of steps.
Three of Mirza’s “irregulars” were sitting on the bottom tread.
The eldest reported to Mirza. The three men staying in Sayid Hassan’s house had been out for most of the morning and had only just returned. The two white men had simply driven around the city, up Faiz Bazaar and Elgin Road, along Chandni Chowk, and back through the Lal Kuan and Sitaram Bazaars. The Bengali had left the tonga in Chandni Chowk, walked to a house in a nearby street, and rented two rooms for a week, saying he and two friends would move in on the following day.
Mirza looked inquiringly at McColl, as if expecting an explanation.
“Where is Sayid Hassan’s house?” McColl asked.
“You will see it. Come.” Mirza turned and led the way up the crumbling steps. “Look out for snakes,” he said over his shoulder.
As they neared the top of the flight, Mirza advised that they should both keep low, and the two of them made their way half-crouched along a short stretch of passable rampart to the protruding remains of a guard tower. Here another of the detective’s “irregulars” was sitting and dozing with his back to the wall, a pair of British army binoculars reposing in his lap.
Mirza gave him an affectionate cuff. “The house is straight ahead, about two hundred yards away,” he told McColl. He pointed to a large gap in the brickwork and passed him the binoculars. “Don’t push them too far forward, or the light will reflect on the glass.”
McColl took his first look with the naked eye. Sayid Hassan’s house looked like a small estate, with several buildings set within spacious grounds alongside the old Circular Road. A magnificent banyan stood on the eastern edge of the gardens, and a man was sitting in its shadow.
McColl raised the binoculars and brought the figure into focus. A white face, Slavic and handsome, slightly cadaverous. Sergei Piatakov.
Gandhi’s would-be assassin. Caitlin’s husband and lover. According to her, yet another victim of the war.
Weren’t they all?
A pair of legs walked into view beneath the canopy of leaves. And then the familiar figure, face, and shock of hair. Aidan Brady. Laughing about something.
McColl wondered what he would have done with a decent rifle.
“That is them?” Mirza whispered in his ear.
“Oh yes,” McColl said. He lowered the binoculars and edged away from the gap. “Let’s go back down.”
Getting down the broken steps was harder than getting up.
“You can keep watching?” McColl asked when they finally reached the bottom.
“Of course. As long as you wish it.”
“It won’t be for long.” One way or the other, he thought, climbing back aboard the tonga. They turned back toward the city center close by the Turkman Gate, and passed through a succession of unusually lifeless bazaars. McColl was puzzled. “It’s not Sunday, is it?” he asked.
“No… Ah.” Mirza realized what was puzzling his companion. “A hartal—a shop owner’s strike—has been called by Gandhi’s supporters,” he explained. “Many are closed. Many Hindu shops, in any case; the Muslims are not so keen.”
“I see.”
“Gandhi will be here himself in a few days,” Mirza added.
“What’s your opinion of him?” McColl asked the detective.
Mirza shrugged. “An unusual man, certainly. Half saint, half Artful Dodger. A rare combination. But I will offer you a prediction, my friend. One day India will be ruled by Indians—perhaps better, perhaps worse—and Mohandas Gandhi will probably hasten that day. But in the end his only legacy will be a faint whiff of guilt hanging over future generations. The time for spinning wheels is past.”
It was late in the afternoon, the shadows lengthening almost visibly, but even in the shade, the heat was still intense and, to Piatakov’s taste, unpleasantly humid. He would have been cooler indoors, sitting beneath the efficiently whirring fans, but over their five-day stay, Piatakov had grown to love the views at this particular time of day. There was something quite magical about the mix of light and color: the dark palms framing the distant silver river, the towers and domes of the city slowly catching fire in the brilliant sunset. Delhi seemed to glow with inner light, as if its walls were hung with a million burnished icons.