T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

Outside, the monsoon recommenced with a sudden crashing fall of rain that smeared the windows and darkened the room till it might have been dusk. I listened to it hiss in the gutters like a thousand coiled snakes.

Beersley gazed down on the nawab with a look of such contempt, I almost feared he would kick him aside as one might kick an importunate cur out of the roadway, but instead he merely folded his arms and said, “I can assure you, sir, that the kidnapper is in this very room and shall be brought to justice before the hour is out.”

The ladies gasped, the gentlemen exclaimed: “What?” “Who?” “He can’t be serious?” I found myself swelling with pride. Though the case was as foggy to me as it had been on the night of our arrival, I knew that Beersley, in his brilliant and inimitable way, had solved it. When the hubbub had died down, Beersley requested that the nawab take a seat so that he might begin. I leaned back comfortably in my armchair and awaited the denouement.

“First,” Beersley said, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking to and fro on the balls of his feet, “the facts of the case. To begin with, we have a remote, half-beggared duchy under the hand of a despotic prince known for his self-indulgence and the opulence of his court—”

At once the nawab leaped angrily to his feet. “I beg your pardon, sir, but I find this most offensive. If you cannot conduct your investigation in a civil and properly respectful manner, I shall have to ask you to … to—”

“Please, please, please,” Beersley was saying as he motioned the nawab back into his seat, “be patient and you’ll soon see the method in all this. Now, as I was saying: we have a little out-of-the-way state despoiled by generations of self-serving rulers, rulers whose very existence is sufficient to provoke widespread animosity if not enmity among the populace. Next we have the mysterious and unaccountable disappearance of the current nawab’s heirs and heiresses — that is, Gopal, Abha, Shanker, Santha, Bhupinder, Bimal and Manu, Govind, Vallabhbhi Shiva, and now Indira and Sushila — beginning on a moonless night two weeks ago to this day, the initial discovery of such disappearance made by the children’s governess, one Miss Elspeth Compton-Divot.”

At the mention of the children, the begum, who was seated to my left, began to whimper softly. Miss Compton-Divot boldly held Beersley’s gaze as he named her, the two entrepreneurs — Bagwas and Patel — leaned forward attentively, and Hugh Tureen yawned mightily. As for myself, I began to feel rather sleepy. The room was terrifically hot despite the rain, and the glutinous breeze that wafted up from the punkah bathed me in sweat.

“Thus far,” Beersley continued, “we have a kidnapper whose motives remained obscure — but then the kidnapper turned murderer, and as he felt me close on his trail he attempted murder once again. And let me remind you of the method employed in both cases — a foul and feminine method, I might add — that is, the use of poison. I have here,” he said, producing the nail file, “the weapon used to kill the servant set to watch over the nawab’s flock. It is made of steel and was manufactured in England — in Hertford, to be precise.” At this point, Beersley turned to the governess and addressed her directly. “Is it not true, Miss Compton-Divot, that you were born and raised in Hertfordshire and that but six months ago you arrived in India seeking employment?”

The governess’s face lost its color in that instant. “Yes,” she stammered, “It is true, but—”

“And,” Beersley continued, approaching to within a foot of her chair and holding the nail file out before him as if it were a hot poker, “do you deny that this is your nail file, brought with you from England for some malignant purpose?”

“I don’t!” she shouted in obvious agitation. “Or rather, I do. I mean, yes, it is my nail file, but I lost it — or … or someone stole it — some weeks ago. Certainly you don’t think that I—?”

“That you are the murderer, Miss Compton-Divot?”

Her face was parchment, her pretty neck and bosom as white as if they’d never seen the light of day.

“No, my dear, not the murderer,” Beersley said, straightening himself and pacing back across the room like a great stalking cat, “but are murderer and kidnapper one and the same? But hold on a minute, let us consider the lines of the greatest poet of them all, one who knew as I do how artifice and deceit seethe through the apparent world and how tough-minded and true one must be to un-confound the illusion from the reality. ‘There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: / We know her woof,’” he intoned, and I realized that something had gone wrong, that his voice had begun to drag and his lids to droop. He fumbled over the next line or two, then paused to collect himself and cast his unsteady gaze out over the room. “’Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wing, / Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, / Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—’”

Here I cut him off. “Beersley,” I demanded, “get on with it, old boy.” It was the opium. I could see it now. Yes, he’d been up all night with the case and with his pellucid mind, but with his opium bowl too.

He staggered back at the sound of my voice and shook his head as if to clear it, and then, whirling round, he pointed a terrible riveting finger at the game hunter and shrieked: “Here, here is your murderer!”

Tureen, a big florid fellow in puttees and boots, sprang from his chair in a rage. “What? You dare to accuse me, you … you preposterous little worm?” He would have fallen on Beersley and, I believe, torn him apart, had not the nawab’s Sikhs interceded.

“Yes, Hugh Tureen,” Beersley shouted, a barely suppressed rage shaking his voice in emotional storm, “you who’ve so long fouled yourself with the blood of beasts, you killed for the love of her, for the love of this, this”—and here the word literally burst from his lips like the great Lord’s malediction on Lucifer—“Lamia!”

A cry went round the room. “Oh yes, and she — black heart, foul seductress — led you into her web just as she led you,” he shouted, whirling on the nawab, “Yadavindra Singh. Yes, meeting with you secretly in foul unlawful embrace, professing her love while working in complicity with this man”—indicating Bag-was—“and your damned ragged fakir, to undermine your corrupt dynasty, to deprive you of your heirs, poison your wife in her sleep, and succeed to the throne as the fourth begum of Sivani-Hoota!”

Everyone in the room was on his feet. There were twenty disputations, rain crashed at the windows. Tureen raged in the arms of the Sikhs, and the nawab looked as if he were in the throes of an apoplectic fit. Over it all came the voice of Beersley, gone shrill now with excitement. “Whore!” he screamed, descending on the governess. “Conspiring with Bagwas, tempting him with your putrid charms and the lucre the nawab gave out in exchange for your favors. Yes, drugging the children and night nurses with your, quote, hot chocolate!” Beersley swung round again, this time to face the begum, who looked as confused as if she’d awakened to find herself amid the Esquimaux in Alaska. “And you, dear sinned-against lady: your little ones are dead, smothered by Bagwas and his accomplice Patel, sealed in rubber at the plant, and shipped in bulk to Calcutta. Look for them there, so that at least they may have a decent burial.”

I was at Beersley’s side now, trying to fend off the furious rushes of his auditors, but he seemed to have lost control. “Tureen!” he shrieked, “you fool, you jackanapes! You believed in this harlot, this Compton-Divot, this feminine serpent! Believed her when she lay in your disgusting arms and promised you riches when she found her way to the top! Good God!” he cried, breaking past me and rushing again at the governess, who stood shrinking in the corner, “’Lamia! Begone, foul dream!’”