The Midnight Palace Read online

  ‘Aren’t you a bit young to be the headmaster’s assistant?’ asked Sheere, avoiding the boy’s eyes.

  ‘Young? You flatter me. I’m just blessed with an enviable complexion, but I’ll be twenty-three soon.’

  ‘I never would have guessed it,’ replied Sheere.

  ‘It runs in the family,’ Ben explained. ‘Our skin is resistant to aging. To this day people mistake my grandfather for an altar boy.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Sheere, suppressing a nervous laugh.

  ‘So how about accepting St Patrick’s hospitality?’ Ben insisted. ‘We’re having a party for some of the kids who are about to leave us. It’s sad, but a whole new life will open up before them. It’s exciting too.’

  Sheere fixed her eyes on Ben and her lips slowly formed a sceptical smile.

  ‘My grandmother asked me to wait here.’

  Ben pointed at the door. ‘Here?’ he asked. ‘Just here?’ Sheere nodded.

  ‘You see …’ Ben began, waving his hands about. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but … Well, I thought I might not have to. These things are not good for the image of the institution, but you leave me no option. There’s a structural problem. With the walls.’

  The young girl looked at him in astonishment.

  ‘Structural?’

  Ben adopted a serious expression and nodded.

  ‘Exactly. It’s regrettable, but here on the very spot where you’re standing, not even a month ago, Mrs Potts, our old cook, God bless her, was hit by a piece of brick that fell from the second floor and for two weeks she thought she was Moll Flanders. Imagine the scandal.’

  Sheere laughed.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a laughing matter, if I may say so,’ said Ben, his tone icy.

  ‘I don’t believe a single word you’ve said. You’re not the headmaster’s assistant, you’re not twenty-three, and no cook was ever hit by a shower of bricks,’ said Sheere defiantly.

  ‘Are you suggesting I have provided you with inaccurate information?’

  ‘To put it mildly.’

  Ben weighed up the situation. The first part of his strategy was on the point of floundering, so he had to think of a change of direction, and it had to be clever.

  ‘I may have been carried away by my imagination, but not everything I’ve said is untrue.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I didn’t lie about my name. I’m called Ben. And the bit about offering you our hospitality is also true.’

  Sheere gave a winning grin.

  ‘I’d love to accept, Ben. But I must wait here. Honestly.’

  The boy adopted an expression of calm acceptance.

  ‘All right. I’ll wait with you,’ he announced solemnly. ‘If a brick falls, let it fall on me.’

  Sheere shrugged and fixed her eyes on the door again. A long minute of silence went by. Neither of them moved or uttered a word.

  ‘It’s a hot night,’ said Ben at last.

  Sheere turned her head. ‘Are you going to stand there all night?’

  ‘Let’s make a deal,’ Ben proposed. ‘Come and have a glass of ice-cold lemonade with me and my friends and then I’ll leave you in peace.’

  ‘I can’t, Ben. Really.’

  ‘We’ll only be twenty metres away,’ said Ben. ‘We could tie a little bell to the door.’

  ‘Is it so important for you?’ asked Sheere.

  Ben nodded.

  ‘It’s my last week in this place. I’ve spent my whole life here and in five days’ time I’ll be alone again. Completely alone. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to spend another night like this one, among friends. You don’t know what it’s like.’

  Sheere looked at him for a long while.

  ‘I do know,’ she said at last. ‘Take me to that lemonade.’

  ONCE BANKIM HAD LEFT his office, Mr Carter poured himself a small glass of brandy and offered another to his visitor. Aryami declined and waited for Carter to sit in his armchair, with his back to the large window below which the young people were still celebrating, unaware of the icy silence that filled the headmaster’s room. Carter wet his lips and looked questioningly at the old woman. Time had not diminished the authority of her features in the slightest. Her eyes still blazed with the same fire he remembered in the woman who, so long ago, had been his best friend’s wife. They gazed at one another for a long time.

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Carter finally.

  ‘Sixteen years ago I was obliged to entrust you with a baby boy, Mr Carter,’ Aryami began in a low but firm voice. ‘It was one of the most difficult decisions of my life and I know for a fact that during these past years you have honoured the trust I put in you and haven’t let me down. During this time I never interfered with the boy’s life, for I was well aware that he wouldn’t be better off anywhere else but here, under your protection. I’ve never had the opportunity to thank you for what you’ve done for him.’

  ‘I was only doing my duty,’ Carter replied. ‘But I don’t think that is why you’ve come here, at this late hour.’

  ‘I wish I could say it was, but you’re right,’ said Aryami. ‘I’ve come here because the boy’s life is in danger.’

  ‘Ben.’

  ‘That’s the name you gave him. He owes everything he knows and everything he is to you, Mr Carter,’ said Aryami. ‘But there is something that neither you nor I can protect him from any longer: the past.’

  The hands on Thomas Carter’s watch pointed towards midnight. Carter downed his brandy, then turned to glance through the window at the courtyard below. Ben was talking to a girl Carter didn’t recognise.

  ‘As I said earlier, I’m listening,’ Carter repeated.

  Aryami sat up and, clasping her hands together in her lap, she began to tell her story …

  ‘FOR SIXTEEN YEARS I’VE travelled this country in search of refuge and somewhere to hide. Two weeks ago I was spending a month in the house of some relatives in Delhi, convalescing after an illness, when a letter arrived for me. Nobody could have known that my granddaughter and I were there. When I opened it, I found a blank sheet of paper inside, without a single letter written on it. I thought it might be a mistake or perhaps a joke, until I examined the envelope. It bore the postmark of Calcutta’s main post office. The ink was blurred and some of it was hard to make out, but I was able to decipher the date: 25 May 1916.

  ‘I put away the letter that had apparently taken sixteen years to cross India and reach the door of that house, a place to which only I had access, and I didn’t look at it again until that evening. My eyesight hadn’t played a trick on me: the date was the same, but something else had changed. The sheet of paper, which only a few hours earlier had been completely blank, now contained a single line written in red ink so fresh I smudged the writing with just a brush of my fingers. “They are no longer children, old woman. I’ve come back for what is mine. Stay out of my way.” That is what I read in the letter before throwing it into the fire.

  ‘I knew then who had sent it and I also knew that the moment had come when I must unearth the memories I had suppressed all these years. I don’t know whether I ever spoke to you about my daughter Kylian, Mr Carter. I’m an old woman now, awaiting the end of my life, but there was a time when I was a mother too, the mother of the most marvellous creature that ever set foot in this city.

  ‘I remember those days as the happiest of my life. Kylian had married one of the most brilliant men in the country and had gone to live with him in the house he had built himself in the north of the city, a house the like of which had never been seen. My daughter’s husband, Lahawaj Chandra Chatterghee, was an engineer and a writer. He was one of the first to design the telegraph network for this country, Mr Carter, one of the first to design the electric power grid that will govern the future of our cities, one of the first to build a rail network in Calcutta … One of the first in everything he decided to do.

  ‘But their happiness was short-lived. Chandra Chatterghee died in the horrific fire tha
t destroyed the old Jheeter’s Gate Station, on the other side of the Hooghly River. You must have seen that building at some time? It’s completely abandoned now, but once it was one of the most glorious buildings in Calcutta – a landmark in steel construction, a labyrinth of tunnels, multiple storeys, systems for piping fresh air and for the hydraulics connecting to the rails. Engineers from the world over came to visit and admire the structure, all of it created by the engineer Chandra Chatterghee.

  ‘Nobody knows how it happened, but the night of its official inauguration a fire broke out in Jheeter’s Gate, and a train that was transporting over three hundred abandoned children to Bombay went up in flames and was buried in the dark tunnels dissecting the earth. Nobody came out alive. The train is still stranded somewhere deep in the shadows, in the underground network of passages on the western edge of Calcutta.

  ‘The night the engineer and the children died in that train was one of the worst tragedies ever to hit this city. For many, it was a sign that perpetual darkness was descending over Calcutta. There were rumours that the fire had been started by a group of British financiers who viewed the new railway line as a threat, for it would prove that transport by sea, one of the largest businesses in Calcutta since the days of Lord Clive and the colonial company, was nearing its end. The train was the future. The railway tracks were the path by which this country and this city would one day arrive at a new age, free of British domination. The night Jheeter’s Gate burnt down, those dreams turned to nightmares.

  ‘A few days after Chandra’s disappearance, my daughter Kylian, who was expecting her first child, was threatened by a strange character who emerged from the shadows of Calcutta, a murderer who swore he would kill the wife and descendants of the man he blamed for all his misfortunes. That man, that criminal, was responsible for the fire in which Chandra lost his life. A young officer from the British army, an ex-suitor of my daughter’s called Lieutenant Michael Peake, tried to stop the madman, but the task proved more difficult than he expected.

  ‘The night my daughter was due to give birth, some men broke into the house and took her away. Hired assassins. Men with no name or conscience who, for a few coins, can easily be found in the streets of this city. On the verge of despair, Lieutenant Peake spent a whole week combing Calcutta in search of my daughter. As the tense week came to a close Peake had a terrifying thought, which turned out to be true. The murderer had taken Kylian into the very bowels of the ruins of Jheeter’s Gate. There, among the filth and the remains of the tragedy, my daughter had given birth to the boy you have turned into a young man, Mr Carter.

  ‘She had given birth to him – to Ben – and also to his sister, whom I have tried to turn into a young woman. Just as you did with the boy, I gave the girl a name, the name her mother had always intended for her: Sheere.

  ‘Risking his own life, Lieutenant Peake managed to snatch the two children from the murderer’s hands. But the murderer, blind with anger, swore he’d follow their trail and kill them as soon as they reached adulthood, to wreak vengeance on their dead father, Chandra Chatterghee. That was his sole intention: to destroy every trace of the engineer’s work and his life, at any cost.

  ‘Kylian died promising that her soul would not rest until she knew that her children were safe. Lieutenant Peake, the man who had secretly loved her as much as her own husband, gave his life so that the promise that had sealed her lips would come true. On 25 May 1916 Lieutenant Peake managed to cross the Hooghly River and hand over the children to me. To this day I do not know what became of him.

  ‘I decided that the only way of saving these children was to separate them and conceal their identity and their whereabouts. You know the rest of Ben’s story better than I do. As for Sheere, I took her under my wing and set off on a long journey around the country. I raised the girl in remembrance of the great man her father was and of my daughter, the great woman who gave life to her. I never told her more than I thought was necessary. I was naive enough to think that time and space would eventually erase all traces of the past, but our footprints are never lost. When I received that letter I knew my flight had come to an end and I must return to Calcutta to warn you. I wasn’t honest in the letter I wrote to you that night, Mr Carter, but I acted according to my heart, believing deep in my soul that I was doing the right thing.

  ‘When I realised the murderer knew where we were, I couldn’t leave my granddaughter alone, so I took her with me and together we travelled back to Calcutta. During the entire journey I was haunted by a thought that became increasingly obvious as we approached our destination. I was convinced that now Ben and Sheere had left their childhood and become adults, the murderer had awoken once more from the darkness and was intent on carrying out his ancient promise. And I knew, with the certainty that only comes when one is close to a tragedy, that this time he would stop at nothing …’

  FOR A LONG TIME Thomas Carter kept his eyes glued to his hands and didn’t say a word. The only reasonable thing he could think to do at the moment was to pour himself another glass of brandy and drink a solitary toast to his health.

  ‘You don’t believe me …’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Carter pointed out.

  ‘You didn’t say anything,’ said Aryami. ‘That’s what’s worrying me.’

  Carter savoured the brandy and wondered what had made him wait ten years to release the heady charms of the superb spirit. Why on earth had he kept it locked away in his cabinet like some useless relic?

  ‘It’s not easy to believe what you’ve just told me, Aryami,’ replied Carter. ‘Put yourself in my shoes.’

  ‘And yet you took the boy into your care sixteen years ago.’

  ‘I took charge of an abandoned child, not of an improbable story. This is my duty, my job. This building is an orphanage, and I’m the head of it. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘There is more to it than that, Mr Carter,’ replied Aryami. ‘At the time I did a little investigating: you never informed the authorities of Ben’s arrival. You never filed a report. There are no documents to prove that he was taken in by this institution. There must have been some reason why you acted in this way if you didn’t believe what you call this “improbable story”.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to contradict you, Aryami, but such documents do exist. I may have put down other dates and other circumstances as a precaution, but this is an official institution, not a travelling circus.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Aryami cut in. ‘So I’ll ask you again: what prompted you to fake Ben’s records if you didn’t believe the facts I set out in my letter?’

  ‘With all due respect, I don’t see why I need to reply to that question.’

  Aryami looked straight into Mr Carter’s eyes but he tried to look away. The old lady smiled bitterly.

  ‘You’ve seen him,’ said Aryami.

  ‘Are we talking about a new character in the story?’

  ‘Who is fooling who, Mr Carter?’

  The conversation seemed to have reached deadlock. Carter stood up and paced round the office under the watchful eye of Aryami Bose.

  ‘Supposing I believe your story,’ he said, turning towards her. ‘It’s just a supposition. What would you expect me to do now?’

  ‘Get Ben away from this place,’ Aryami replied emphatically. ‘Talk to him. Warn him. Help him. I’m not asking you to do anything for the boy that you haven’t already been doing for years.’

  ‘I need to consider this matter carefully,’ said Carter.

  ‘Don’t take too long. This man has waited sixteen years; perhaps he won’t mind waiting another day. Or perhaps he will.’

  Carter collapsed into his armchair, defeated.

  ‘I had a visit from a man named Jawahal the day we found Ben,’ Carter explained. ‘He asked about the boy and I told him we didn’t know anything. Soon after, the man disappeared and was never seen again.’

  ‘This man uses a lot of different names and identities, but he has
only one objective, Mr Carter,’ said Aryami, her steely eyes shining. ‘I haven’t crossed the whole of India to sit and watch my daughter’s children die because of the indecision of a couple of old fools, if you’ll forgive the expression.’

  ‘Old fool or not, I need time to think. Perhaps we’d better talk to the police.’

  Aryami sighed.

  ‘There is no time, and it wouldn’t do any good,’ she replied harshly. ‘Tomorrow afternoon I’m leaving Calcutta with my granddaughter. Tomorrow afternoon Ben must leave this place and get as far away as possible. You have a few hours to talk to the boy and prepare everything.’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ Carter objected.

  ‘It’s as simple as this: if you don’t talk to him, I will,’ Aryami stated, making her way to the door. ‘And pray that this man doesn’t find him before he sees the light of day.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Ben tomorrow,’ said Carter. ‘I can do no more.’

  Aryami threw him a last glance from the doorway.

  ‘Tomorrow, Mr Carter, is today.’

  ‘A SECRET SOCIETY?’ SHEERE asked, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. ‘I thought secret societies only existed in penny dreadfuls.’

  ‘Siraj here could spend hours contradicting you,’ said Ian. ‘He’s our expert on the subject.’

  Siraj nodded gravely, agreeing with the reference to his boundless wisdom.

  ‘Have you heard about the Freemasons?’ he asked.

  ‘Please,’ Ben butted in. ‘Sheere is going to think we’re a bunch of sorcerer apprentices.’

  ‘And aren’t you?’ laughed the girl.

  ‘No,’ said Seth solemnly. ‘The Chowbar Society is founded on two entirely worthy principles: to help one another, and to share our knowledge so we can build a better future.’

  ‘Isn’t that what all great enemies of humanity claim to do?’ asked Sheere.

  ‘Only for the last two or three thousand years,’ said Ben, interrupting again. ‘Anyway, this is a very special night for the Chowbar Society.’