The Midnight Palace Read online

  Again Ian and Ben gave each other a meaningful look. They were both thinking the same thing.

  ‘We’ll have to take that risk,’ said Ben, feigning as much conviction as possible.

  WITH TREMBLING HANDS ARYAMI BOSE lit another match and reached forward to light the wick of the white candle that stood in front of her. The flickering flame cast hazy shadows across the dark room. A gentle draught caressed her hair and the back of her neck. Aryami turned round. A sudden gust of cold air, infused with an acrid stench, tugged at her shawl and blew out the candle. Darkness enveloped her again and the old lady heard two sharp knocks on the front door. She clenched her fists; a faint reddish light was filtering through the doorway. The banging was repeated, this time louder. The old woman felt a cold sweat rising through the pores on her forehead.

  ‘Sheere?’ she called out weakly.

  Her voice echoed in the gloom of the house. There was no answer. A few seconds later the two knocks sounded again.

  In the dark Aryami fumbled around on the mantelpiece. The only source of light came from the dying remains of a few coals in the fireplace below. She knocked over several objects before her fingers found the long metal sheath of the dagger she kept there, and as she drew out the weapon, the curved blade shone in the glow. A razor-sharp streak of light appeared beneath the front door. Aryami held her breath and slowly walked towards it. She stopped when she reached the door and heard the sound of the wind through the leaves of the bushes in the courtyard.

  ‘Sheere?’ she whispered again. There was no reply.

  Holding the dagger firmly, she placed her left hand on the door handle and gently pulled it down. The rusty mechanism groaned after years of disuse. Gradually the door opened and the bluish brightness of the night sky cast a fan of light into the interior of the house. There was nobody there. The undergrowth stirred, the murmur of an ocean of small dry leaves. Aryami peered round the door and looked, first to one side, then to the other, but the courtyard was deserted. Just then, the old woman’s leg bumped against something and she looked down to discover a small basket at her feet. It was covered with a thick veil which did not block the light coming from within the basket. Aryami knelt down and cautiously removed the cloth.

  Inside she found two small wax figures shaped like naked babies. From each head emerged a lit cotton wick and the two effigies were melting, like candles in a temple. A shudder ran through Aryami’s body. She threw the basket down the broken stone steps, stood up and was about to return indoors when she noticed something coming towards her along the corridor that led to the other end of her house: footsteps, invisible but aflame. The old woman felt the dagger slipping from her fingers as she slammed the front door shut.

  As she stumbled down the steps, not daring to turn her back on the front door, Aryami tripped over the basket she’d thrown there a few seconds earlier. Lying helpless on the ground, she watched in astonishment as a tongue of flame licked at the base of the doorway and the old wood caught fire. She crawled a few metres until she reached the bushes, then pulled herself up and stared impotently as flames burst through the windows.

  Aryami ran out into the street, and she didn’t stop to look back until she was at least a hundred metres away from what had once been her home. Now it was a blazing pyre spitting red-hot sparks and ash into the sky. Neighbours began to lean out of their windows and come into the streets to gaze in alarm at the huge fire that had spread through the house in a matter of seconds. Aryami heard the crash of the roof as it collapsed and fell, engulfed in flames. A dazzling flash, like scarlet lightning, illuminated the faces of the crowd which had gathered to watch, and people looked at one another, bemused, unable to comprehend what had happened.

  Aryami Bose wept bitterly for what had once been her childhood home, the home where she had given birth to her daughter. And as she melted into the confusion of Calcutta’s streets, she bade goodbye to it for ever.

  IT WASN’T DIFFICULT TO determine the exact location of the engineer’s house, following the cryptogram Siraj had decoded. According to the instructions, duly checked against the fieldwork Roshan had carried out, Chandra Chatterghee’s house stood in a quiet street that led from Jatindra Mohan Avenue to Acharya Profullya Road, about a kilometre and a half north of the Midnight Palace.

  As soon as Siraj was satisfied that the fruits of his research had been properly digested by his friends, he expressed his urgent desire to go in search of Isobel. All his friends’ attempts at reassuring him and suggesting he should wait for her as she was certain to return fell on deaf ears, and in the end, true to his promise, Roshan offered to accompany him. The two set off into the night after agreeing they would meet the others at Chandra Chatterghee’s house as soon as they had any news of Isobel.

  ‘What have you two managed to find out?’ asked Ian, turning to Seth and Michael.

  ‘I wish our results were as spectacular as Siraj’s, but to be honest the only thing we’ve discovered is a mass of loose ends,’ Seth replied. He went on to tell them about their visit to Mr de Rozio, whom they’d left in the museum, continuing the research. They’d promised they would return in a couple of hours to help him.

  ‘What we’ve discovered until now only goes to confirm what Sheere’s grandmother – sorry, your grandmother – told us. At least in part.’

  ‘There are some gaps in the engineer’s story it won’t be easy to fill in,’ said Michael.

  ‘Exactly,’ Seth agreed. ‘In fact, I think that what we haven’t discovered is far more interesting than what we have …’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Well,’ Seth went on, warming his hands by the fire, ‘Chandra’s story is documented from the moment he became a member of the official Institute of Industry. There are papers confirming that he refused a number of offers from the British government to work for the army building military bridges, as well as a railway line that was to join Bombay and Delhi, for the exclusive use of the navy.’

  ‘Aryami told us how much he loathed the British,’ Ben commented. ‘He blamed them for many of the things that have gone wrong in this country.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Seth continued. ‘But the curious thing is that, despite his open dislike of the British, of which there were many public displays, Chandra Chatterghee participated in a strange project for the British military between 1914 and 1915, a year before he died in the Jheeter’s Gate tragedy. It was a mysterious business with a peculiar name: the Firebird.’

  Sheere raised her eyebrows and drew closer to Seth, looking concerned.

  ‘What was the Firebird?’

  ‘It’s hard to tell,’ Seth replied. ‘Mr de Rozio thinks that it might have had something to do with a military experiment. Some of the official correspondence that turned up among the engineer’s papers was signed by a colonel called Sir Arthur Llewelyn. According to de Rozio, Llewelyn held the dubious honour of heading the forces that were responsible for repressing the peaceful demonstrations for independence that took place between 1905 and 1915.’

  ‘Held?’ asked Ben.

  ‘That’s what’s so intriguing,’ Seth explained. ‘Sir Arthur Llewelyn, His Majesty’s official butcher, died in the Jheeter’s Gate fire. What he was doing there is a mystery.’

  The five friends looked at one another, confused.

  ‘Let’s try to put some order to this,’ Ben suggested. ‘On the one hand we have a brilliant engineer who repeatedly refuses generous offers of employment from the British government due to his dislike of colonial rule. Up to there everything makes sense. But suddenly this mysterious colonel appears on the scene and involves him in an operation which, whatever way you look at it, must have made Chandra Chatterghee’s stomach turn: a secret weapon, an experimental way of controlling crowds. And he accepts. It doesn’t make sense. Unless …’

  ‘Unless Llewelyn had uncanny powers of persuasion,’ said Ian.

  Sheere raised her hands in protest.

  ‘My father would never have
taken part in any kind of military project, it’s impossible. Certainly not for the British, and not for the Bengalis either. My father despised the military – he thought they were nothing but brutes blindly carrying out the dirty work of corrupt governments and colonial companies. He would never have allowed his skills to be used to invent something that would massacre his own people.’

  Seth watched her quietly, weighing her words.

  ‘And yet, Sheere, there are documents to prove that he did take part, in some way,’ he said.

  ‘There has to be some other reason,’ she replied. ‘My father built things and wrote books. He wasn’t a murderer.’

  ‘Leaving aside his ideals, there must be some other explanation,’ Ben remarked. ‘And that’s what we’re trying to discover. Let’s go back to Llewelyn and his powers of persuasion. What could he have done to force Chandra to collaborate?’

  ‘Perhaps his power didn’t lie in what he could do,’ Seth stated, ‘but in what he could choose not to do.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Ian.

  ‘This is my theory,’ Seth continued. ‘In all the engineer’s records we haven’t found a single mention of Jawahal, this childhood friend, except in a letter from Colonel Llewelyn addressed to Chandra and postmarked November 1911. In it our friend the colonel adds a postscript in which he briefly suggests that, if Chandra refuses to take part in the project, he will be forced to offer the post to his old friend Jawahal. What I think is this: Chandra had managed to conceal his relationship with Jawahal, who was by then in prison, and had developed his career without anybody knowing that he had once covered up for the man. But let’s suppose that this Llewelyn had come across Jawahal in prison and Jawahal had revealed the true nature of their relationship. This would put Llewelyn in an excellent position for blackmailing the engineer and forcing him to collaborate.’

  ‘How do we know that Llewelyn and Jawahal met one another?’ Ian asked.

  ‘It’s only a supposition,’ Seth replied. ‘Sir Arthur Llewelyn, a colonel in the British army, decides to ask for the help of an exceptional engineer. The engineer refuses. Llewelyn investigates him and discovers a murky past, a trial to which the engineer is linked. He decides to pay a visit to Jawahal, and Jawahal tells him what he wants to hear. Simple.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Sheere.

  ‘Sometimes the truth is the hardest thing to believe. Remember what Aryami told us,’ Ben said. ‘But let’s not rush into anything. Is de Rozio still investigating this?’

  ‘He is, yes,’ replied Seth. ‘The number of documents is so vast that he’d need an army of library rats to make sense of anything.’

  ‘You’ve made quite a good job of it,’ remarked Ian.

  ‘We weren’t expecting anything less,’ said Ben. ‘Why don’t you go back to the librarian, and don’t lose sight of him for a moment. I’m sure we’re missing something …’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Michael, although he already knew the answer.

  ‘We’ll go to the engineer’s house,’ Ben replied. ‘Perhaps what we’re looking for is there.’

  ‘Or something else …’ Michael pointed out.

  Ben smiled.

  ‘As I said, we’ll take that risk.’

  SHEERE, IAN AND BEN arrived outside the gates that guarded Chandra Chatterghee’s house shortly before midnight. To the east, the narrow tower of the Shyambazar was silhouetted against the moon’s sphere, projecting its shadow over the garden of palm trees and bushes that hid the building.

  Ben leaned on the gate of metal spears and examined their threatening sharp points.

  ‘We’ll have to climb over,’ he remarked. ‘It doesn’t look easy.’

  ‘We won’t have to,’ said Sheere next to him. ‘Our father described every inch of this house in his book before he built it, and I’ve spent years memorising every detail. If what he wrote is correct, and I have no doubt that it is, there’s a small lake behind these shrubs and the house stands further back.’

  ‘What about these spears?’ asked Ben. ‘Did he write about them too? I’d rather not end up skewered like a roast chicken.’

  ‘There’s another way of getting into the house without having to jump over them,’ said Sheere.

  ‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Ben and Ian asked together.

  Sheere led them through what was barely an alleyway, a small gap between the railings surrounding the property and the walls of an adjacent building with Moorish features. Soon they reached a circular opening that looked as if it served as the main sewer for all the drains in the house. From it came a sour biting stench.

  ‘In here?’ asked Ben sceptically.

  ‘What did you expect?’ snapped Sheere. ‘A Persian carpet?’

  Ben scanned the inside of the sewage tunnel and sniffed.

  ‘Divine,’ he concluded, turning to Sheere. ‘You first.’

  THEY EMERGED FROM THE TUNNEL BENEATH A small wooden bridge that arched over the lake, a dark velvety mantle of murky water stretching in front of Chandra Chatterghee’s house. Sheere led the two boys along a narrow bank, their feet sinking into the clay, until they reached the other end of the lake. There she stopped to gaze at the building she had dreamed about all her life. Ian and Ben stood quietly by her side.

  The two-storey building was flanked by two towers, one on either side. It featured a mix of architectural styles, from Edwardian lines to Palladian extravaganzas and features that looked as if they belonged to some castle tucked away in the mountains of Bavaria. The overall effect, however, was elegant and serene, challenging the critical eye of the spectator. The house seemed to possess a bewitching charm, so that although the first impression was one of bewilderment you then had the feeling that the impossible jumble of styles and forms had been chosen on purpose to create a harmonious whole.

  ‘Is this how your father described it?’ asked Ian.

  Sheere nodded in amazement and walked towards the steps leading to the front door. Ben and Ian watched her hesitantly, wondering how she thought she was going to enter such a fortress. But Sheere seemed to move about the mysterious surroundings as if they had been her childhood home. The ease with which she dodged obstacles, almost invisible in the dark, made the two boys feel like trespassers in the dream Sheere had nurtured during her nomadic years. As they watched her walk up the steps, Ben and Ian realised that this deserted place was the only real home the girl had ever had.

  ‘Are you going to stay there all night?’ Sheere called from the top of the stairs.

  ‘We were wondering how to get in,’ Ben pointed out. Ian nodded in agreement.

  ‘I have the key.’

  ‘The key?’ asked Ben. ‘Where?’

  ‘Here,’ Sheere replied, pointing to her head with her forefinger. ‘You don’t open the locks in this house with a normal key. There’s a code.’

  Intrigued, Ben and Ian came up the steps to join her. When they reached the door, they saw that at its centre was a set of four wheels on a single axle. Each wheel was smaller than the one behind it, and different symbols were carved on the metal rim of each, like the hours on the face of a clock.

  ‘What do these symbols mean?’ asked Ian, trying to decipher them in the dark.

  Ben pulled a match from the box he always carried with him and struck it in front of the lock mechanism. The metal shone in the light of the flame.

  ‘Alphabets!’ cried Ben. ‘Each wheel has an alphabet carved on it. Greek, Latin, Arab and Sanskrit.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ sighed Ian. ‘Piece of cake …’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Sheere. ‘The code is simple. All you have to do is make a four-letter word using the different alphabets.’

  Ben looked at her intently.

  ‘What is the word?’

  ‘Dido,’ replied Sheere.

  ‘Dido?’ asked Ian. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s the name of a mythological Phoenician queen,’ Ben explained.

  Sheere smiled app
rovingly and Ian was momentarily jealous of the spark that seemed to exist between the two siblings.

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Ian objected. ‘What have the Phoenicians got to do with Calcutta?’

  ‘Queen Dido threw herself on a funeral pyre to appease the anger of the gods in Carthage,’ Sheere explained. ‘It’s the purifying power of fire. The Egyptians also had their own myth, about the phoenix.’

  ‘The myth of the firebird,’ Ben added.

  ‘Isn’t that the name of the military project Seth told us about?’ asked Ian.

  His friend nodded.

  ‘This whole thing is starting to give me goosebumps,’ said Ian. ‘You aren’t seriously thinking of going inside? What are we going to do?’

  Ben and Sheere exchanged a determined glance.

  ‘It’s very simple,’ Ben replied. ‘We’re going to open this door.’

  THE LIBRARIAN’S EYELIDS WERE beginning to feel like slabs of marble as he faced the hundreds of documents in front of him. The vast sea of words and figures he had retrieved from Chandra Chatterghee’s files seemed to be performing a sinuous dance and murmuring a lullaby that was sending him to sleep.

  ‘I think we’d better leave this until tomorrow morning, lads,’ Mr de Rozio began.

  Seth, who had been afraid he would say this for some time, surfaced immediately from his jumble of folders and gave him a pious smile.

  ‘Leave it, Mr de Rozio?’ he objected in a light-hearted tone. ‘Impossible! We can’t abandon this now.’

  ‘I’m only a few seconds away from collapsing over this table, son,’ replied Mr de Rozio. ‘And Shiva, in his infinite goodness, has granted me a weight, which, the last time I checked it, in February, was somewhere between two hundred and fifty and two hundred and sixty pounds. Do you know how much that is?’

  Seth smiled jovially.

  ‘About a hundred and twenty kilos,’ he calculated.