The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (17 page)

“As you are well aware, Watson, I am not a religious person, and after a few days my interest in the bizarre religiosity of Benares began to wane. When I returned to the hotel, after my third night of exploration, I decided to move on. My decision to leave, however, was postponed suddenly by the events that began to transpire the following morning.

“I rose early and decided to breakfast not at Clarks but at the Hotel de Paris, an establishment strangely named, considering its location just across the main cantonment road. It was a most pleasant building, however, and its front gardens were filled with bougainvillea and jacaranda flowers, bathed in the soft morning sunlight.

“As I entered, I noticed a man and a woman, the woman English, the man Indian, seated in a corner of the veranda, engaged in what appeared to be a deep and most serious conversation. The man I judged to be about forty years of age. He was well dressed and, judging from his carriage, of a distinguished Hindoo background. By his build and accent I judged him to be Bengalese. The woman was somewhat younger and rather frail-looking.

“As I observed them, the woman suddenly rose, as if in anger, and strode into the hotel. The man appeared surprised at her action but did not attempt to follow. He rose slowly, his surprise having retreated into sadness, and left.

“I went directly to the breakfast room. It was shortly after the bearer had brought my tea that the woman entered and took her seat at a table near mine. I could observe her closely without seeming rude or intrusive. I deduced much from her appearance. She was a youngish woman, in her early thirties perhaps, aristocratic in her bearing, married, most probably to one of our government officers, and was someone who was experienced in India, since she spoke Hindustani to the bearer, and it was decent enough. The deference and familiarity with which she was treated indicated that she was a person of some importance and that she had been in the hotel for several days. That she was under some great strain showed in her face, which contained an expression of great sadness and fear. She occasionally wiped a tear from her eye, and I noticed that she scarcely ate any of the food that she ordered. She fingered her wedding ring constantly, and looked repeatedly out the window towards the entrance to the garden, as if she hoped to see someone appear.

“It was quite late by now, almost nine thirty in the morning, and there was no one in the dining room save the turbaned bearers who stood guard, ready to serve our smallest want.

“I decided to approach this woman and learn the cause of her grief. I quickly penned a note to her on one of my calling cards, and handed it to one of the bearers for delivery:

Please forgive my intrusion into your private thoughts, but I could not help but notice that you are under a great strain concerning the whereabouts of your husband. Perhaps we might talk on the veranda over another cup of tea before the sun gets any higher. I may be of some help to you in finding him.

“She was at first startled by my note, almost angered by it, and I could see in her eyes the suspicion that I had something to do with his disappearance. For how else could I know that he had disappeared? Suddenly her face became impassive, almost grim. She looked up, rose, and nodded to me. I asked the bearer to bring tea to us outside.”

“You appear to be a complete stranger to me,” she said. “And yet you know something about my husband’s disappearance. You therefore must be part of the plot against him. Tell me where he is. I implore you.”

There was a desperate look in her eyes as she spoke. Holmes had reasoned correctly.

“You are right. We have never laid eyes on each other, Madam, but I can assure you that I do not know where your husband is. I do not even know his name. What I know was merely based on what I observed.”

“Observed?” she said sardonically.

“Surely it takes no great talent to observe a woman fingering her wedding ring in great agitation and looking towards the entrance to the hotel for someone to appear to deduce that that someone might be her husband, that he has not come, and that his failure to arrive has caused great consternation in his wife. The staff appears to know you well, and so I reason that you have been waiting for many days. Your fear is now that something dreadful has happened to him,” said Holmes.

“You are very clever for a chemist,” she said.

“I have had other occupations in the past. Perhaps, Madam, I may gain your confidence by showing you this.”

It was a note of thanks and warm praise from the Viceroy for Holmes’s help in a minor affair in Patna. It also disclosed his true identity.

“I can assure you, Madam, that you may speak to me in all confidence and that I have no interest other than seeing your husband restored to you. In showing you that note I have deliberately taken the risk of allowing you to know my true identity, which, I trust, will remain with you and you alone.”

She smiled wanly. “For the first time in many weeks I feel as though there is some hope that I may find Vincent.”

“Please tell me everything from the very beginning,” said Holmes.

“I have been in India with my husband for six years. We have lived in Calcutta and most recently in Delhi. My husband is Vincent Smith, director general of the Archaeological Survey of India. Our years here, until recently, have been very peaceful and filled with satisfaction, for I share my husband’s interests in historical matters. Unlike many of our countrymen who come here, we have not been separated by my husband’s work. He has shared his enthusiasms and discoveries fully with me, and I have tried in my small way to aid him to the limits of my abilities.”

“Your husband’s writings are well known to me,” said Holmes. “Pray, continue.”

“As you may know, my husband has dedicated his life to the reconstruction of Indian history and to the preservation of India’s monuments. He is working on a volume on the early history of the Subcontinent that I venture to say will become the standard work on the subject for many years to come. Vincent had worked through much of the earliest history but felt that there were very real gaps in the history of the Buddhist religion. He became intent therefore in expanding the investigations of the Survey into the Nepalese Tarai, where, hidden in its jungle confines, he believed lie the archaeological ruins that will provide the answers to many historical problems. More than at any time in his career, I found him to be almost obsessed with the history of early Buddhism. He thought about and talked about nothing else.

“It was when he was in this rather delicate frame of mind that there appeared one day at the Survey an Englishman, recently arrived in India, who claimed to be a trained archaeologist looking for work as one of the Survey’s field investigators. He displayed excellent credentials, and even though he was not previously known to anyone at the Survey, he was immediately hired. He said that he had recently worked in Hanoi with the French, and after a stay in Hong Kong he had decided to ply his trade in India. He had excellent references as well, for the French scholars appeared to have written for him effusively. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of antiquities. He claimed a great deal of knowledge concerning the geography of northern Bihar and the Nepalese Tarai, of which he claimed to have made special studies. This latter fact brought him immediately to the attention of my husband, who after a brief interview hired him on the spot.

“His name was Anthony Fordham. To me from the beginning this man was an evil presence, a handsome, smooth, oily gentleman, who I felt in my bones could not be trusted. But he immediately gained my husband’s confidence, and the two became almost inseparable. Their talk was constant, and Vincent took to inviting him home to dinner on a regular basis. I was most uncomfortable with this new friendship, for on the few short occasions on which I was left alone with him, Fordham looked at me so voraciously that I felt compelled to leave the room.

“Vincent refused to hear my doubts, berated me for my fears of Fordham, and thought my suspicions and worries unfounded. For the first time, I became isolated from my husband and felt myself replaced somewhat in his attention. The more I saw of Fordham the more I felt that he could not be trusted.

“It was with a sense of relief, therefore, that I learned that Vincent had decided to send Fordham to the Tarai for a preliminary survey of Buddhist monuments. Permission for the expedition had come from the Nepalese rulers after a long interval, and Fordham left with a single assistant, this now about three months ago. He refused a large party of workers from the Survey, saying that he would be best served by workers hired and trained on the spot.

“A month later, Vincent reported elatedly to me that Fordham had made major discoveries, including ruins that pre-dated the historical Buddha, a rather sensational discovery in itself. Fordham’s drawings and diagrammes were quite detailed, and considering the report a major addition to our knowledge of Indian antiquity, Vincent scheduled it for immediate publication without review.

“Six weeks ago Vincent returned home in a state of utter dejection. He said that Fordham’s report had just arrived from the printer’s and was about to be distributed when he noticed some odd inconsistencies in its presentation. In consultation with his chief assistant, Mukherjee, it was decided that Fordham had either made some major errors, or had perpetrated a colossal hoax. He had decided to delay publication of the report until an on-site investigation could be made. Fordham had failed to respond to any of his messages and could not be reached. Only Mukherjee was aware of the problem, and in order to avoid his own embarrassment as well as that for the Government as a whole, Vincent had decided that he had best make a field investigation himself.

“Mukherjee went ahead. He wired a few days later from Patna that the sites visited by Fordham had been systematically looted by him and a gang of henchmen, that the sites had been destroyed for archaeological purposes, and that Fordham had disappeared and probably had left India with whatever booty he was able to remove from the ruins. This confirmed my husband’s worst fears. He still felt compelled to go to the site himself, even though his sense of betrayal was acute.

“Two weeks ago, he departed, leaving Mukherjee in charge of the Survey, and, on the pretext that he wanted a few weeks to write up his own archaeological notes, left for the Nepalese Tarai. He promised to wire me as soon as he arrived. But after his departure, I received no word. After ten days of silence, I decided then to follow him. Mukherjee accompanied me this far, and has implored me to go no further, for he deemed the natural dangers of the Tarai alone sufficient to deter anyone. He said that he would notify the Government of what had happened and would send a party of police and sepoys after my husband, but I have steadfastly refused to allow this. My husband wanted to avoid the Fordham affair’s becoming public knowledge at all costs. And so I find myself in the unenviable position of going to the Tarai jungles alone in search of my husband. It was Mukherjee whom you may have seen yesterday with me in the garden. He is still trying to stop me, but I wish to leave for Patna this afternoon. From there I shall go to the Tarai.”

Towards the end of her description, Holmes could see the fear that gripped her soul emerge on her face.

“I do not think that a venture into the Tarai is a wise one, Madam. The natural dangers of the Himalayan marsh alone should indeed give you pause,” said Holmes. “And I should be derelict if I were to allow you to continue to believe that your husband may be in the hands of a mere archaeological charlatan. He may be in the hands of an archcriminal who is most dangerous. The man who calls himself Anthony Fordham is in reality Anton Furer, a thief and plunderer who continues to devastate the archaeological and museum worlds for his own purposes. The false name Fordham is one that he has used on several occasions in the past. I am fully aware of his activities in Hanoi and Hong Kong. The letters from French scholars are forgeries, of course. The French
Sûreté
has put out a world wide alert for his capture. It is unfortunate that word appears not to have arrived in India.’”

She appeared even more frightened than before. “Will he harm my husband?”

“Not until he finds what he is after. That he is not already far away in another country plotting other misdeeds tells me only one thing: that he has yet to find his prize. Perhaps he needs your husband to find it, perhaps to identify it. In any case, it is imperative that I talk to Mukherjee, and that I go to find your husband.”

“Only if I go with you.” She uttered the last few words with such firmness that Holmes decided not to try to dissuade her.

“I do not think it wise for you to come, but I shall not try to stop you if you insist. In any case, I should like to meet with Mukherjee as soon as possible,” Holmes said.

Mukherjee had not yet left Benares, and appeared at Holmes’s hotel within the hour. He struck Holmes favorably as soon as he began to speak, he told me, and Holmes knew at least in this case that Smith had chosen well. He knew intimately the areas of the Tarai which he and Holmes must visit, and had some clear ideas of where Smith might be. He brought with him detailed maps. Holmes took the risk once again of identifying himself. Mukherjee seemed unimpressed, which Holmes found a distinct relief from the normal reaction. He proceeded without interruption.

“As you know, Mr. Holmes, that area of the Tarai is very difficult, and we have only begun our archaeological explorations there. The Nepalese Ranas for many years were quite rigid on this point: no entry under any circumstances. For some reason, however, they relented recently, and allowed this expedition.”

Holmes told me he smiled at those words, for it was obvious to him that some minor figure in the Rana palace had been enticed by Furer with promises of great rewards, and had wheedled what he wanted out of the Maharajah.

“A system of rewards is at work here, Mr. Mukherjee, and I don’t doubt that Furer will have promised to share his booty with various individuals. Who is the Rana in charge?”