VI
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Dominic awakened to an insistent tapping at his door about eight o’clock, to find the room flooded with sunlight. He rolled out of bed and reached for his dressing-gown so abruptly that one gecko, until then apparently petrified in a corner of the ceiling, whisked out of sight under the rickety wiring, and another, prowling within inches of Dominic’s heel as he hit the floor, shot away in a fright, leaving behind on the boards a two-and-a-half inch tail that continued to twitch for ten minutes after its owner had departed.
‘Dominic, are you awake? It’s me, Tossa. Open the door! ’ She fell into the room in a cloud of nylon ruffles. ‘You haven’t seen anything of Anjli, have you?’ A silly question, she realised, his eyes were barely open yet. ‘She’s gone! I woke up a little while ago, and she isn’t anywhere to be seen, and her bed’s cold. I thought at first she was in the bathroom, but she isn’t. Her pyjamas are there folded on the pillow. But
Her glance fell upon the wriggling tail at that moment, and her eyes opened wide in incredulous horror, for she had read about, but never yet encountered, the more unnerving habits of the smaller lizards. But she was too preoccupied to spare a word for the phenomenon Dominic plainly had not even noticed.
‘It’s a fine morning,’ he said reasonably, ‘she’ll have gone off for a walk. I don’t suppose she’s any farther away than the garden.’
Tossa shook her head emphatically. ‘She’s taken that outsize handbag of hers. I checked as soon as I realised… It’s got all her money in it, and her passport. Her coat’s gone from the wardrobe, and a cotton dress… and her washing things have vanished out of the bathroom. No, she’s up to something on her own. Whatever it is, she planned it herself. You know what I think? I’d have sworn even at the time she was being too quiet and reasonable. When it came to the point, she simply didn’t want to go back home.’
‘But she surely wouldn’t run off on her own, just to give us the slip? She’s got nobody here to turn to, after all, even if she does hate the thought of going back to England.’
‘She’s got a cousin,’ Tossa reminded him dubiously.
‘She didn’t show much sign of taking to him.’
‘I know. But he’s the only relative she has got left over here, as far as we know. We’d better try there first, hadn’t we?’ Her eyes remained fixed on the abandoned tail, now twitching solemnly and regularly as a metronome. Her toes curled with horror. ‘Don’t step back! ’ she warned; his bare foot was just an inch from the pale-green tip.
Dominic looked down, uttered a startled yelp, and removed himself several feet from the improbable thing in one leap. ‘Good lord, what on earth…!
‘They say they do it when they’re scared,’ said Tossa, and wondered if she had not shed an appendage herself this morning, a taken-for-granted tail of European self-confidence and security. ‘I think they grow another. She can’t really have gone off and left us permanently, can she? Surely she’d be afraid!’
‘Go and get dressed, and we’ll see if she comes to breakfast. If not, maybe some of the hotel staff will have seen her go out.’
That was good sense, and Tossa seized on it gratefully; Anjli had a healthy appetite, and was always on time for meals. But this time the magic did not work. The two of them met at their table in the ground-floor dining-room, the garden bright and empty outside the long windows; the tea arrived, strong and dark as always, the toast, the eggs; but no Anjli.
They went in search of the room-boy. Last night’s attendant was off-duty for the day, and the shy southerner who had just tidied away the gecko’s tail, finally limp and still, had seen nothing of Miss Kumar. Nor had the sweeper in the courtyard, nor the porters at the gates. All this time Dominic had had one eye cocked for the truant’s return, fully expecting her to saunter in from a walk at any moment; but time ticked by and the possible sources of information dried up one by one, and still no Anjli. By a process of elimination they arrived at the reception clerk, who was hardly a promising prospect, since he had come on duty only at eight o’clock this morning, when Anjli’s absence had already been discovered. However, they tried.
‘Miss Kumar? No, I have not seen her this morning, I am sorry.’ The clerk was a dapper young man, friendly and willing to please. He looked from one anxious face to the other, and grasped that this was serious; and it was in pure kindness of heart that he felt impelled to add something more, even if it was of no practical help. ‘I have seen nothing of her since she came in with you yesterday evening. To be sure, I remember there was a note delivered here for her later…’
‘Note?’ said Dominic, pricking up his ears. He looked at Tossa, and she shook her head; not a word had been said about any note. ‘Did she get it?’
‘Of course, sir, I sent it up to her as soon as it came, by the room-boy.’
‘You don’t know who it was from? Who brought it?’ Certainly not the postman, at that hour.
‘No, sir, I cannot say from whom it came. It was a common peon who brought it, some shop porter, perhaps. Though I do recall that the note was not in an envelope, but just a sheet of paper folded together – a little soiled, even…’
It did not sound at all like the immaculate Vasudev. And who else was there in Delhi to be sending notes to Anjli? The film unit was away in Benares, and no one else knew her.
‘About what time was this?’
‘I cannot say precisely, sir, but a little after nine, probably.’
Anjli had announced her intention of going for her bath at about that hour. And only a few minutes later, that floating wisp of melody had drifted in at the window that overlooked the courtyard… No, he was imagining connections where there were none. Tossa was right, the ragas were there for everyone to use and enjoy. It was placing too much reliance on his unpractised ear to insist that what he had heard was not merely Raga Aheer Bhairab, but Ashok’s unique folksong variation of it, and no other.
So they were back to the necessity of beginning the hunt for Anjli somewhere; and the obvious place was Purnima’s house. Where, of course, they told each other bracingly in the taxi, Anjli would certainly be.
‘Note?’ Vasudev’s thin black moustache quivered with consternation. ‘No, indeed I assure you I sent my little cousin no note. I would not dream of addressing her except through you, when you have been placed in charge of
