As soon as Athreya realized where they were headed, the hair on his arms stood on end. His senses sharpened and he involuntarily slowed down his breathing so it did not interfere with his hearing. He continued to crane his neck and look leftward through the window towards the chapel.
Less than a minute later, a hazy patch of illumination flared far to his left. The person had switched on the lights in the chapel, and it was spilling out into the misty night through the chapel door. Judging by the lack of other sounds and the quickness with which the light had come on, Athreya figured that the chapel door had been open. The door, which he had locked that evening, was already open!
Fifteen seconds later, although it seemed like five long minutes, an inarticulate cry came from the chapel. It was Sebastian’s voice, and he was furious. He was shouting as loudly as he could, trying to awaken people in the mansion and alert them to some drastic happening.
Five seconds later, a gunshot sounded. Then another.
Athreya stood riveted to the window, his eyes wide open and his ears primed. He had the rare opportunity to witness the drama as it was happening. It was imperative that he continued to watch–others would respond to Sebastian’s call. His eyes focused on the hazy blotch of light at the distance, which was the chapel door.
Even as these thoughts flashed through his mind, he heard sounds from inside the mansion. Manu was opening his door. Feet thudded across the floor of the room above his.
A few seconds later, the blotch of light he was looking at dimmed momentarily as a figure appeared in the chapel’s doorway. It kicked at something very close to the threshold, and Athreya saw its long legs scissoring as it ran out of the door. It wore darkish trousers and some sort of a jacket.
Just as the figure seemed to have escaped, a hand shot out from inside the chapel and caught it by the jacket. With a jerk, the figure yanked it away and ran, heading down the walkway parallel to the mansion.
Within a few yards of the chapel door, the figure melted away into the night, as the light from the chapel faded. Athreya heard footsteps down the walkway, past his window. But he could see nothing.
Meanwhile, the mansion had erupted in an assortment of sounds. Bhaskar bellowed for Sebastian and Manu. Manu’s door had flown open. Someone was running across the floor above. Michelle and Dora’s high-pitched voices were asking questions that drew no answers. Doors thudded somewhere farther off, probably in the staff quarters.
When he was sure there was nothing more to see, Athreya turned from the windows, pulled on his jacket and hurried out of his room into the lighted corridor. He ran to Bhaskar’s door, knocked perfunctorily and pushed it open.
Bhaskar was sitting up in bed with his automatic in his hand.
‘What happened?’ he demanded.
‘Shots at the chapel,’ Athreya snapped back. ‘Someone shot someone else. Stay here and keep your automatic handy. Someone has a gun. I’ll come back.’
Leaving Bhaskar’s door open, he ran out of the back door, making towards the chapel. When he got there, he found Manu and Ganesh bending over Sebastian, who was lying in the aisle, close to the door. His nightshirt was drenched in blood from two very visible, gaping wounds. His eyes had glazed over and he didn’t seem to be breathing. In his hand was a ripped piece of cloth.
‘Call Michelle!’ Manu yelled to Athreya.
Athreya spun around and ran back to the back door of the mansion, where Murugan and Gopal were standing, having just emerged from the staff quarters. Athreya ran into the gallery’s corridor, calling for Michelle at the top of his voice.
‘Coming!’ she yelled back and ran down the stairs with her medical bag.
‘Sebastian has been shot!’ Athreya called to Bhaskar through his open door and ran to the chapel with Michelle.
Within a minute, he knew that there was little hope. The bullet wounds were near the heart, and Sebastian’s eyes had rolled upwards. As Athreya stepped around the fallen man, his foot touched something on the floor. It was a soft leather pouch, flat and rectangular. It must have fallen when Sebastian ripped the killer’s jacket. At once he knew what the pouch was–a set of lock picks.
Taking a paper napkin from Michelle’s medical bag, he picked it up and dropped it into his pocket. Lock-picking, he knew from experience, was notoriously difficult to do with gloved hands. Moreover, the metal handles of the lock picks carried fingerprints very well.
He walked slowly down the aisle and stopped a yard or two from the altar. Someone had opened the two small cabinets built into the wooden stands that supported the ends of the altar stone.
He looked up at the mural of Jesus on the cross. It was looking down at him and the altar. At that moment, things fell into place. He knew what his subconscious mind was trying to tell him through the last sketch. He knew whose fingerprints he would find on the lock picks.
18
An hour later, Athreya stood where Phillip had been killed, viewing the dais and the altar that stood on it. So, both murders had something to do with the altar. Blood had been spilled before it, the wooden cabinets below it had been forced open and the candles on had been moved around. Something about the altar had instigated two murders. He climbed up the steps to the dais, switched on the lights above the altar and stood behind it, studying it.
From his wallet, he pulled out a very thin, flexible strip of plastic. This he inserted between two of the stone slabs–the ones in the middle and on the left side–that formed the top of the
