‘Thank you … You are too kind. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to ask about one of the things you said. Does the whole valley really know?’
Her eyes were full of shame. Athreya nodded silently.
‘Bhaskar? Manu?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Others too. Dora is aghast and ashamed at Richie. She agonizes over what he does and sheds tears.’
‘My husband …’ she began wretchedly, but couldn’t finish. Her words hung in the air.
‘He doesn’t, as far as I know. He is one of the few who doesn’t. Also because he trusts you. He will not think ill of you.’
‘And I cheated him.’ Her voice shook. ‘He deserves better.’
Jilsy gnawed at her lower lip for a long moment, thinking furiously. Athreya waited. At length, she looked up.
‘If I promise to never do this again, Mr Athreya–never!–will you help us leave this valley?’
‘In what way?’
‘With what has just happened. I am going to tell my husband that it is dangerous for us to remain here. There is no telling what the mongrel could do to us after being released from jail. After all, we were the ones who tipped you off about him.
‘I’m going to tell Ganesh that we must leave this place as soon as we can. This will become a closed chapter; I will never return to this place. We can settle happily somewhere else. I promise that I will never ever be so stupid again. Will you help me, sir? Will you back me up when I tell Ganesh that we need to leave this place forever?’
‘I will.’
‘Thank you, sir. I couldn’t have asked for more.’
It was going to be an uneasy night. Athreya could sense the disquiet among the gathering when he returned to the drawing room. There had been thirteen at dinner on Friday, and Phillip had been killed. Now, a dozen remained, and the night was disconcertingly similar to Friday’s. Grey coils of mist, heavy and damp, swirled in the valley, reducing visibility to a few feet. Low clouds hung overhead, shrouding the world in inky darkness. It was only the light spilling from the French windows and the feeble glow of a few solar lamps along the walkways that challenged the night’s reign.
Talk was desultory and faces wary. Yet, people seemed reluctant to break up the gathering. They were drawing comfort from being together in a group, putting off the loneliness of the bedroom for as long as they could.
Ganesh took refuge in his rum and Coke as Jilsy sat beside him, preoccupied and silent. Perhaps she was contemplating her personal watershed, unable as she was to share it with her husband. Bhaskar brooded in a corner, exchanging sporadic words with Varadan and Father Tobias. Sebastian and Manu were talking in low tones, with Richie listening nervously. Dora and Michelle seemed comfortable with each other’s silence. Abbas had returned to his room in the annex.
Athreya’s vivid imagination, which often helped him see beyond the obvious, was hyperactive tonight, showing him glimpses of the phantoms that seemed to be waltzing in others’ minds. Several pairs of eyes turned to him frequently, perhaps taking comfort in his presence. All doors, he knew, would be locked tonight, and the sun would be welcomed in the morning with rare fervour.
As the grandfather clock chimed at the stroke of midnight, the gathering stirred uncomfortably. It was getting late. They had to return to their rooms sooner than later. Athreya took the lead despite not feeling sleepy in the least. This festering morbidity, he knew, should not be allowed to get out of hand.
‘Time to retire,’ he said brightly, smiling with a lightness he did not feel. ‘Need to get my forty winks if I have to get up in time for my morning jog.’
‘Good night, Mr Athreya,’ Bhaskar said, taking the cue. ‘I’ll retire too. It’s past midnight.’
‘Me too.’ Manu broke away from Sebastian and smiled at Athreya. ‘Goodnight, sir.’ He nodded to his father and continued, ‘Sebastian and I will lock up.’
That ended the evening. The four people staying at the annex went out together as a tight group, and Sebastian locked the French windows after them. Richie, Dora and Michelle drained their glasses and went upstairs as Manu checked the front door. A minute later, Athreya was in his room.
But sleep refused to come. His overactive mind refused to settle down, drawing tenuous links between disparate facts as it strove to stitch them into a patchwork tapestry of sound logic. His practical half, however, reiterated that all the evidence had not yet come in. It would be premature to draw conclusions.
An hour passed as he tossed and turned in bed. Then another. A long while later, he got out of bed and looked at his watch. It was 2.35 a.m. He decided to go to the window and breathe in the damp night air. The mist had thinned somewhat, but it was still murky outside.
As he stood at the window, it occurred to him that this was the room Phillip had been staying in when the mongrel broke in. The bars on the window had not existed then. All the mongrel had to do was to scale the six- or seven-foot wall below the window, and he would have been inside the room. How easy!
Even as the thought occurred to him, he heard a sharp click. Someone had unlatched a door in haste, shooting the bolt back without regard to the sound it produced. The next moment, he heard slippered feet running down the art gallery outside his door. Then came two clicks that he recognized. The person had opened the back door.
Athreya pressed his face against the bars of his window and craned his neck to the left, wondering if he could see the person as he or she emerged from the walkway at the rear of the mansion. But it was pitch-dark. The night intended to keep its secrets.
Sounds, however, carried well in the still night air. The patter
