Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Missing Servant

"Very good, madam," he said, putting away his notebook. "I'll be on my way. One thing is there, though. Your former driver, Munnalal. Last night only, he was most brutally murdered."

Mrs. Kasliwal's body visibly tensed for a moment.

"It happened in the property directly abutting your own, madam, at eleven-thirty. You heard anything?"

"Nothing," claimed Mrs. Kasliwal. "I was fast asleep I can assure you. Such a long, tiring day it was. But how can you be sure he was murdered?"

"He was stabbed in the neck, madam."

Mrs. Kasliwal made a face as if she had smelled something unpleasant and shook her head from side to side.

"Such dangerous times we live in, I tell you," she said. "Most probably he got into an altercation with the wrong sort."

"Anything is possible, madam," said Puri. "But seems odd to me he was murdered here-right behind your house."

"Who knows what goes on, Mr. Puri? These people live such different lives to us."

"He wasn't coming to see you, madam?"

"Me, Mr. Puri? What business would he have with me?" Mrs. Kasliwal's words were liquid indignation.

"Could be he was in need of assistance?"

"What kind of assistance exactly?"

"I'm told he was facing financial difficulties."

Mrs. Kasliwal rolled her eyes. "That is hardly news, Mr. Puri! Munnalal was always asking for salary advance. These types are in and out of trouble. So much drinking and gambling is going on."

"Did you ever give him anything extra?"

"Extra?" asked Mrs. Kasliwal, regarding him with mild contempt.

"Like a bonus, say?"

"I gave him his salary. That is all. Buss! Now I've answered enough of your questions, Mr. Puri. There's such a busy day ahead. Mr. Malhotra will be arriving at nine-thirty to go over the defense. And I'm hosting the monthly meeting of the Blind Society."

"No need to explain, madam," said Puri. "It's about time I pushed off. Till date, I'm without my breakfast."

Puri picked up Tubelight ten minutes later from behind the Sunrise Clinic.

He could hardly control his excitement.

"Boss, the security guard remembers a girl being brought in on August twenty-first night!" he said, clambering into the car. "Says she was covered in blood. But, Boss! She was very much alive!"

"He's certain of it?" asked the detective.

"One hundred-no, three hundred and fifty percent certain!"

"Why so certain?" Puri said skeptically.

"She was dropped off by a man matching Munnalal's description in a Sumo, and the very next night she left!"

"She left? How?"

"Taxi. Came and took her."

"She was with someone?"

"The guard's got confusion on this point," answered Tubelight. By this the operative meant that the guard had clammed up suddenly when asked.

"Could he tell you where the taxi went, at least?"

Tubelight grinned.

"No delay! Tell me!" insisted Puri.

"Train station."

"He's certain?"

"Overheard the taxi-wallah being told where to go."

"Very good!" exclaimed Puri. "Tip-top work!"

"Thanks, Boss," said Tubelight with a grin.

The detective instructed Handbrake to head directly to the station.

"Boss, you don't want to interview the clinic owner? He's Dr. Sunil Chandran."

"Naturally I would want to know why it was Mary was discharged and who all paid the bill," he said. "But I'll visit Dr. Chandran later. For now, let us stick on the trail while it remains hot."

On platform 2, where the Jat Express to Old Delhi was about to depart, hundreds of passengers with suitcases and bundles balanced on their heads were trying, all at once, to push through the narrow doorways of the already crowded second-and third-class carriages.

The weakest, including women with babies and the elderly and infirm, were ejected from the crush like chaff from a threshing machine, while the strongest and most determined battled it out, pushing, shoving and grabbing one another, their voices raised in a collective din.

Puri watched as an acrobatic young man clambered up the side of one carriage, scrambled along the roof and then attempted to swing himself inside over the heads of the competing passengers jammed into one of the doorways. But he was roughly pushed away and, like a rock fan at a concert, was passed backward aloft a sea of hands and dumped unceremoniously onto the platform. Unperturbed, he scrambled to his feet and clambered up the side of the train to try again.

The detective continued along the platform where the calls of chai-and nimboo paani-wallahs competed with train tannoy announcements preceded by their characteristic organ chords. A knot of migrant workers, evidently waiting for a long-delayed train, lay sprawled over sheets of newspaper on the hard concrete platform, sleeping soundly.

Near the first-class retiring room, he found the men he was looking for: three elderly station coolies who were sitting on their wooden baggage barrows taking a break from the grueling work of ferrying passengers' luggage on their heads.

Like the other coolies Puri had just interviewed at the main entrance to the station, they wore bright red tunics with their concave brass ID plates tied to their biceps. Their arms and legs were thin and sinewy.

Puri explained that he was looking for a missing girl called Mary who was said to have come to the station on the night of August 22. His description of the girl was cobbled together from the facts he'd gleaned about her during his investigation-together with a certain amount of deductive reasoning.

"She is a tribal Christian from Jharkhand in her early twenties. She would have been extremely weak and probably had bandages wrapped around her wrists. I believe that if she boarded a train, its destination was probably Ranchi."

The old men listened to the detective's description. One of them asked, "What was the date again?" Puri repeated it. No, he said after some discussion with his fellow coolies, they had not seen a girl who matched that description. "We would remember," he said.

The detective made his way to the last platform. There he found a young coolie who was carrying three heavy-looking bags on his head for a family traveling on the Aravali Express to Mumbai.

Puri walked alongside him as he made his way to one of the second-class A/C carriages.

"Yes, sir, I remember her well," said the coolie after he had dropped off the bags for the family and Puri had described Mary to him. "She could hardly walk. She seemed sick. Yes, she had bandages around her wrists."

"Did she board a train?" asked the detective.

"A man put her on board the-" The coolie suddenly stopped talking. "Sir, I'm a poor man. Help me and I will help you," he said.

Puri took out his wallet and handed the man one hundred rupees. This was as much as the coolie made in a day, but his composed expression did not change as he tucked the note into his pocket.

"She boarded the Garib Niwas."

"You saw her get on?"

"Yes, sir, I helped her."

"Did you speak to her?"

"I asked her if she needed a doctor, but she did not answer me. She looked like she was in shock, just staring blankly, not even blinking."

"What happened to the man she was with?"

"He waited until the train departed. Then he left."

"Describe him."

Again the coolie pleaded poverty. Puri had to hand him another hundred rupees.

"Middle aged, dark suit, white shirt, expensive shoes-well polished."

Ever grateful for the observational powers of the common Indian man, the detective made a note of the coolie's name and went in search of the station manager's office.

Twenty minutes later, he was back at the car, where Tubelight and Handbrake had been waiting for him.

"There is one 'Mary Murmu' listed on the manifest for the Garib Niwas train to Ranchi on August twenty-second," he said. "Sounds like she was extremely weak."